Sweetest Downfall
by ohgeekyone
Summary: "You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first." Tommy/OC.
1. Part One: 1

**I doubt many will read this but I've become obsessed with Peaky Blinders over Christmas! **

**This story is split into two parts: pre-War and post-War. I'm not really following any other storylines yet and just kind of running away with the characters. Updating will not be consistent after I've gotten out all the parts I've written (I've written up to Part Two for now). **

**I've not really read around FF on this show so I don't know if this has been done. Please do let me know if it has. On that note, enjoy!**

* * *

I first met Thomas Shelby when I was nine years old.

I'd been friends with Ada since we were six and I saw her racing her brother John at the park down the road; I'd joined in before I even knew their names - no other girls wanted to race on the muddy grass for fear of ruining the dresses their mothers slaved away making. I had no mother to make my dresses and I got given the ones the other girls' mothers gave to me out of pity, the ones their children had grown out of. Sometimes I ended up in boys clothes when the mothers on our street in Birmingham could just alter their daughters' dresses instead of making new ones. The trousers got me far more stares than the too-small dresses or the skirts that were so big on me that not even rolling them up helped. So when I saw a little girl, dressed in a crisp white dress with flowers around the edges running along in the mud with another boy - and she was winning - I knew I'd have to be friends with her. Finally, I'd thought, someone to play with.

Our friendship had blossomed beautifully. We'd grown close instantly, telling each other our secrets: which girls we didn't like, which neighbours we thought were nasty and all the other secrets six year olds had. The secrets had evolved as we had. We grew taller, our hair got longer and so on and so forth, and we'd giggle at boys rather than racing them. The boys in our area weren't particularly intelligent, but they'd played with us whenever we asked to join in and they'd never treated us any differently.

That changed the day Thomas Shelby showed up at the park a few weeks after I'd turned nine.

Ada and I were playing hide and seek with our friends, Jack and Robbie, so naturally we were both covered in muck, grass stains, and I even had a twig in my hair from hiding in the undergrowth along the outskirts of the park. It was Ada's turn to seek and Robbie and I were hiding behind two trees, our arms straight at our sides, laughing quietly and shushing each other when one of us laughed too loud.

Our giggles stopped when we heard a boy's voice call out across the small field, startling us because of the deepness of it. It wasn't Jack's voice, or any of the boys we played with. I peeked around the tree to see a tall boy with dark hair striding towards Ada - who had been counting by the swing set - and my stomach dropped a little. His face told us that he was angry at her. He looked older than us by maybe five or six years and the posh suit he wore only made him look more grown up.

I slowly crept out from behind the tree, ignoring Robbie's whispered calls to go back to hiding. Ada was my best friend - nobody, not even a fifteen year old, would shout at her while I was there to back her up.

As I approached, I heard him reproaching her. "Ada, you were meant to be home over an hour ago. Pol's been worried."

"We're playing Tommy!" Ada snapped, looking the boy up and down and straightening herself to make her look taller.

"Oh yeah? Who's playin'?"

"Me, Daisy, Robbie and Jack."

The boy nodded his head slowly, and as I got closer I saw that he had a cigarette dangling from his mouth, smoke rising gently from it. It made him seem older and I started to think maybe he was more like seventeen rather than the fourteen or fifteen I'd originally thought.

"You can play all you like Ada, so long as yer back in time for dinner. And not with boys - if you wanna play with boys, John and his mates'll play with ya."

She groaned dramatically. "I don't wanna play with John and his friends, they're too boring. They just want to sit around and pretend to be you and Arthur."

I realised who this was. It was her brother Thomas, who she fondly called Tommy when she spoke about him at all. She didn't talk much of her family and I'd assumed it was because she knew how sensitive the topic was when I didn't have one. The orphanage owners and the other kids I lived with on the street down the road from Ada were the only 'family' I could ever consider to be my own. But they beat me often when I was bad, which seemed to be a lot, and Ada had told me that a proper family never intentionally hurt each other. Not even when they were bad, she said.

I slowed down my approach because I didn't want to get too close to Thomas Shelby. I'd heard stories about him, the fights he got into, the girls he chased on occasion, the way his family did something illegal but the coppers all turned a blind eye to. He was not a boy to mess with - their whole family, Ada excluded, were dangerous… or at least that's what I'd overheard from Joe, the orphanage owner.

But it was too late. He'd heard me coming and he slowly turned around to inspect me.

It was odd seeing a boy look at me like he did. I'd seen a few of the older boys leering at me, but never had someone observed me so intensely, like he could see all my secrets, all my fears, all my dreams. I didn't like it.

"You Daisy, then?" He breathed in on the cigarette, pulled it out of his mouth and blew the smoke at me. I didn't cough or flinch - living in Birmingham, you got used to the smoke everywhere. The factory kind and the cigarette kind.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I'd been told my several people, Joe in particular, that I was naughty and always spoke "with no respect for me elders". If there was one person I didn't want to offend, it was Ada's brother.

"You the reason my sister's an hour late for supper?"

He didn't look mad. His face was completely blank, his bright blue eyes staring at me without blinking.

I looked over at Ada who had breathed in, probably to defend me and say it was her fault she was out so late, but I'd gotten so used to taking the blame for the things me and Ada did that I automatically said, "Yes."

He took another drag, still staring at me and ignoring the way Ada hit his arm as she told him that she was old enough now to stay out past 7pm.

He didn't seem to have anything to say so I kept talking. "We were playing, I forgot Ada had to be back by 7. Sorry."

It felt like I was always saying sorry. Sorry for not getting the right bread from the market, sorry for not knowing how to get to the butchers and getting lost, sorry that Joe's money he'd given to me had been stolen by a man twice the size of me the other week… But apologising to Thomas was different. He actually seemed to consider it.

"You'll make sure it won't happen again."

It wasn't a question.

He grabbed Ada's arm gently and started to pull her away when my mouth ran away with me before I could stop it. "I can't promise that, Sir."

He stopped, and Ada's face paled as she started at me.

"What do you mean by that Daisy?" His voice had grown a little colder as he said it.

I swallowed thickly, my heart thudding in my ears. I idly wondered where Jack and Robbie had gone. "I like playing with Ada, Sir, and if I'm hiding that good that she can't find me, and it keeps her out later, that's not something I'm gonna stop."

His eyebrow twitched as Ada quietly reprimanded me. "Dais, stop. I'll be home by 7 next time Tommy, okay?"

Even at that young age, he wasn't used to being told no. It was all I'd ever heard and I hated it. It was why I got into trouble so much. Daisy, you can't go to a school, you're too poor and too stupid. Daisy, you can't play with Ada Shelby, you're so far beneath her, you might as well be shit on her shoe. But she'd be damned if this boy was telling her she couldn't play properly with her best friend.

"What do your parents think about you being home so late?"

"Don't have none."

His face didn't change one bit, but he did finish his cigarette and throw it to the ground beside him. "Well then…" He paused, looking from Ada to me and back again. "Who am I to stop good game of hide and seek?"

He smirked as he left, taking Ada with him. Stopping a good game of hide and seek.


	2. Part One: 2

I started going round to the Shelby's house more after that. I didn't see Thomas or Arthur very much, but I did see John a lot. Him and his friends played with us a lot, but Ada and I had compromised that we'd play in the street outside their house at night so her Aunt Polly could watch over us. She even fed me when we played at night. Proper meals too, not the mush I was usually given by Joe.

Thomas occasionally ate with the family but he usually wasn't anywhere to be seen. In fact, I didn't spend more than two minutes with him close by till I was twelve.

* * *

"Oh come on, Dais, every other girl's been kissed. Let me show you," Harry Waller kept trying to push me against the wall and kissing me. Despite the fact that every other girl my age, Ada included, had already been kissed, I didn't want my first kiss to be from Harry Waller, the stuck up boy whose parents gave him everything he wanted. The boy who'd never been cold or hungry or thirsty or truly tired.

"I don't wanna, Harry," I said firmly, pushing him away from me for the second time.

I glanced down the street to see Ada and Jack kissing against the brick wall, using tongues and everything. She'd seen Lizzie Poole kissing a boy like that behind the bakery the other week and she'd been dying to try it out on Jack. They'd been spending a lot more time together recently, and I'd started to feel a bit left out, so when she asked me to come out with her, Jack, and his friend Harry, I immediately said yes without really thinking about it. If I spent too much time indoors at the orphanage I'd run away, far far away, maybe join the gypsies and travel the country going to fairs. I hated it there more than anything and one day I would be rid of it, but not that day. That day, I'd said yes to Ada and, somewhat unsurprisingly, I'd been ditched for Jack, and Harry was still trying to put his mouth on me in any way he could.

He'd managed to get to my neck, his mouth travelling up and down wetly, and it made me grimace.

"Harry, stop it."

His voice got nastier and his hands around my wrists got tighter. "You're nobody, Daisy Smith, what makes you think you're better than me, eh? What makes you think you can say no? My dad says you're gonna be a whore in a few years anyway, a pretty little orphan like you. Said you'd be flat on your back in a whorehouse by the time you're sixteen. So why not let me kiss you, and then you can always say your first kiss was from a Waller."

It was the first time in years that I'd come close to crying. I'd heard stories about girls like me, poor girls with no education, no family, no money whatsoever, and how they'd have to turn to sleeping with people for money just so they could eat. It didn't sound nice. Ada had looked horrified when I brought those girls up. "You can never do anything like that, Daisy, it's for girls like Irene and Lizzie who always flirt and kiss boys. You're better than that, Dais, don't ever do it, okay? It's unholy and wrong and disgusting."

If I was better than that, why did Harry Waller seem to think it was okay for his hands to grip my neck and pull my face closer to his?

"Fucking stop, Harry," I grunted, kneeing him in between his legs like John had told me to if a boy ever tried to hurt me.

Unfortunately, it only made him groan in pain for a second and then he was just angry. His hand whipped out and slapped hard across the face, my lip splitting on one of his rings. It hurt, but I'd had worse. Joe was twice the size of him and had been twice as angry at me at many points in my life.

"You fuckin' cunt," he growled, grabbing me by my neck but from the front this time, squeezing hard enough so that my eyes widened and started to water. "You're gonna kiss me and one day, when you're nothing but a whore who lives to fuck men like my dad says, I'm gonna make you regret that."

And he forced his mouth onto mine, pushing his tongue into my mouth and his body against mine before I could bring my leg up to kick him or my hand up to hit him back. I screamed against his mouth, hoping Ada would hear me and stop him before he got even more violent. His other hand was in my hair, gripping it tight, so when someone pulled him off me, a huge chunk of my red hair went with him.

I yelped in pain and breathed heavily to stop myself from crying. Looking up expecting to see Jack or Ada, I blanched when I saw Thomas Shelby punching Harry right in the nose, blood spraying in all directions and a sickening crunch resonating through the night air.

"You think it's alright to kiss girls who don't want kissing, boy? Hm?" Thomas sounded so mad, and while I was used to people being mad at me, I knew without any doubt that he was mad at Harry and only Harry. _And rightly so._

I had the sudden thought that maybe Thomas thought I was going to be a whore too. Maybe that was why he hadn't wanted me and Ada playing too late, playing too much together. Maybe I was a bad influence. Maybe he was disgusted with me.

I stayed quiet as Thomas whispered something in Harry's ear and shoved him away. As I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, careful not to get blood on my dress as it was one of my nicer ones Mrs Light, a neighbour, had given me, I saw Harry scrambling to get away from Thomas, dashing down the street and around the corner shouting something about his father and how he was going to make Thomas regret that. Even shouting threats, he still looked terrified. I couldn't blame him - Thomas looked deadly. Time had only made Thomas Shelby more intimidating. He moved gracefully and silently, but still managed to look threatening. He smiled when he was with his friends but even then you knew that he could hurt you if he wanted to. And he'd clearly wanted to hurt Harry.

'"You alright?"

He was looking at me with the same intensity he had three years ago on that park. It scared me, that someone so young could look so perceptive. It felt like he saw everything about me, from my borrowed dress to the dirt still in my hair from days ago. I didn't like it at all.

"Yeah…" My voice came out shakily and I didn't like it. I always had to be strong around Thomas or else he'd walk all over me, Ada had said. She'd told me to never outright defy him like I'd done at the park, but I should never cower before him. "Or any man," she'd said.

"Ada!" He shouted, not taking his eyes off me and the blood trickling down my chin. "Go home now."

I looked over to see Ada disconnect herself from Jack and look round in surprise. "Tommy!" She quickly pushed Jack away from her so it didn't look compromising, but I knew he'd already seen.

"Just go home, Ada," he said quietly, but I knew she'd heard because she swallowed, looked at me with wide, confused and questioning eyes, waited for me to nod to tell her I was okay, and then grabbed Jack's hand and dashed off down the street, leaving Thomas Shelby and I alone.

"Come on, let's get you back home." He sounded tired, I noticed, like he just wanted to go to sleep.

"It's not really home," I muttered under my breath, straightening my dress. Harry had pulled down the corner and I was still worried I had the look of a whore-in-the-making.

We walked in silence to the orphanage and my face turned sour when I saw it at the end of the road. I hated it there, so so much. Everyone in there hated me and I hated everyone.

I slowed down unintentionally, trying to prolong my time in the quiet evening just a little longer.

Thomas noticed, glancing back at me and sighing.

"Daisy, it's been a long day. Come on now, I need to get you back so I can go to sleep myself."

I was being an inconvenience again.

"Sorry," I mumbled, shuffling forwards ahead of him quickly. "You don't have to walk me all the way back, it's just there. Thanks for dealing with Harry."

I rushed off in the direction of the orphanage when I heard him sigh again. "I didn't mean that. I'm just tired. I'll walk you back; come 'ere."

I paused, turning back around. "Honestly, it's fine. Go home."

"What were you doing kissing Harry Waller?"

The question came nonchalantly, as though we'd been talking about Harry and his question didn't come out of nowhere.

"I wasn't. He was kissing me and I was trying to get him off me."

"I know, I saw," he drawled quietly. "I meant what were you doing with him in the first place? He's a piece of work, that kid is."

I scoffed. "Yeah I noticed." I gestured to the cut on my lip and my head that I was sure would have a bald patch where Harry had ripped my hair out.

Thomas stayed quiet while I looked down at my feet. The question didn't mean to come out, but I said it anyway because otherwise I'd lie awake wondering what his answer would be.

"Am I a whore, Thomas? Or gonna be one?"

He blinked at me before taking a packet of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and lighting one slowly. He took two drags before he answered. "Is that what he said to you?"

I nodded. "It's probably true. I ain't gonna be anything worth anythin', am I? I'm nobody with nothin'. I'll _have_ to start sleeping with old men just to live." I grimaced at the thought. I wasn't sure I could have sex with someone Joe's age. I didn't know much about sex, only what I'd heard around the teenagers on the street and the orphanage, but I did know it wasn't good for the girl. Even at twelve, I knew that sex was for the boys and the girls typically had to just lie there.

"Do you think you're a whore?"

I shrugged, feeling silly that I'd brought it up. I was just a kid and I didn't know anything about what I was talking about. I knew Thomas Shelby did. "Don't whores have to kiss loads of people? That was my first kiss, so I don't think I'm a whore yet…"

He took another drag, still watching me carefully. "Your first kiss was that kid?"

I paused before nodding. It didn't sound any better when it was said out loud compared to in my head. I supposed I could have kissed someone worse than Harry Waller - he had lots of friends and his family were really rich. He might have hit me and made me kiss him, but some boys had done worse things to some of the girls me and Ada saw. Some were black and blue with bruises, and some girls who were only a year or two older than me and Ada were pregnant. Not those who lived near Ada, mind, but the girls who lived on my street. The girls who were whores and washer women and lived under a roof with three times as many people as it was made for.

He finished his cigarette, threw it to the floor and strolled towards me. He only stopped when he was a step away from me and it was only then that I realised how tall he was and how much he had filled out since I was nine. He looked… well, he looked more like a man than a boy.

"Listen to me, Daisy Smith," he muttered quietly, as though he was worried anyone but me would hear his words, "boys like Harry Waller will always think they can walk all over girls like you who ain't rich. But they only do it if you let them. So if you don't wanna be a whore, Daisy, don't be a whore. Do whatever you want to do and anyone who says you can't can go fuck themselves. If you can tell _me_ no when you were nine, you can tell people like him no, too. Ya hear?"

I took in a shaky breath and exhaled it as I looked away. His eyes were too intense, too bright, too examining. "I hear ya, Thomas."

He nodded before putting his hands in his waistcoat pockets. "It's Tommy. I'll see you soon, Daisy Smith."

As he walked away from me, he turned around and shouted back, "And if Harry or any other boy tries to kiss you if you don't wanna kiss them, you find me and tell me, and me and Arthur'll make sure nobody does it ever again."


	3. Part One: 3

I was fifteen when our relationship changed. Tommy started hanging around with Ada and me after the debacle with Harry Waller, almost as though he didn't trust us to be alone. It was…nice. He was quiet most of the time but he always joined in with conversations, adding his own stories and jokes. He laughed a lot more than I'd expected, especially when he and Ava were on good terms. He was about twenty, I thought, and had started to work with Arthur and his father when he'd turned eighteen. I didn't entirely understand what it was that he did, something to do with betting and horses, but Ada said it was mostly illegal. I'd replied that surely the police wouldn't allow something illegal to happen so openly, but she'd told me that a lot of the coppers were in on it. What I'd heard when I was a kid had been right after all.

Tommy and I were…friends. We talked together, laughed together, he walked Ada and I anywhere we were going if he wasn't too busy. He'd complained quietly to me before that he was pretty much running the company, even though that was meant to be Arthur's job since he was the eldest. Their Aunt Polly helped with the running of it also, but in the end a lot of the planning and executions of their work were orchestrated by Tommy. He was far far more intelligent than I had ever given him credit for. Than anyone gave him credit for. He would be why their company thrived, not Arthur or Polly. He found it stressful but in secret, I noticed that he flourished when he was in his work zone. He seemed thrilled by his cleverness, that it was him who could solve a situation nobody else could. He got almost giddy (or as giddy as someone like Tommy could be) after whatever he'd planned had been executed without a hitch and that was when he was at his best.

The Shelby's, or the Peaky Blinders as I'd heard people call them (and the people in on their work) around the streets and heard Arthur shout when he was rallying his team, had returned from one such successful outing that day it all changed. Tommy walked through the front door of The Garrison to find me and Ada sat in a corner, her telling me everything that had been happening between her and Jack - she was actually planning on having sex with him next week! They'd done everything else and I was a little hurt that she was only telling me then. Ada had told me explicitly that sex and the things related to it weren't just for the boy, but the girl too. She told me she'd never felt anything like it when Jack's hands were on her private areas, but that it was only good if the boy knew what they were doing. As Jack and her had been dating since we were kids, I had asked her how he'd gotten so good at it. She'd not spoken to me for a week after I'd asked that.

Of course, she'd stopped talking about sex when her family walked in, but my face clearly still looked sour and a little hurt because when Tommy came over to kiss Ada's cheek, he bent down towards me and my cheek and muttered, "Everything alright?" I nodded silently, because what else could I say? I couldn't exactly start talking to him about how Ada and Jack were going to do it in the bedroom next to his next Saturday, could I?

A few hours later, once everyone had finished celebrating and were starting to trawl home, I hugged Ada and told her I'd see her tomorrow. I looked meaningfully at her so that she'd know I was going to have something to say about her and Jack's relationship.

If I'd have been willing to admit it, I would have told her that I was simply jealous. Nobody wanted me the way Jack wanted Ada - he worshipped her. You could tell by the way he looked at her, full of longing and hope. Like she was everything he'd ever wished for. It made me wonder if the other girls he'd "practised" on to get good at sex was just so he could show Ada and make her feel the best she could. The only way boys looked at me was as though they were waiting - waiting for me to finally do it and I could be classed a whore and everyone could have a go. I'd heard them all whispering and laughing about it. It wasn't fair - if Ada had sex, nobody would care. She was with Jack and he was from a good family. Not exactly rich, but definitely not poor. But if I had sex… I would be considered fair game. Because I wasn't rich or even comfortable. I had nothing. Not a penny to my name. I had no education, nothing that was going to help me in the future. Just a good relationship with the Shelby family and I would have to hope they'd help me in a few years when I turned eighteen and I needed money or a job. Mrs Light, the neighbour who often gave me clothes when I needed them, had started teaching me how to sew and make clothes so that I could make dresses and shirts when I was older and sell them for a living. It seemed a bit far fetched, but it was something. I knew I needed some kind of plan for when I turned eighteen and got kicked out of the orphanage.

Ada left with John, Arthur and Polly, leaving me and Tommy alone. It had become standard procedure for him to walk me back to the orphanage at the end of every night. It was often the best part of my day. Sometimes we didn't even speak and we just walked, the sounds of Birmingham the only thing breaking the silence.

Tonight was one of those nights. He just gave me a look and I immediately jumped up and grabbed my coat, and followed him out of the door. It took until the orphanage was in sight before he said something.

"I saw you talking to Johnny Rich tonight."

I slowed down but I didn't stop. He wouldn't like it if I stopped - it'd put him off talking. He liked everything casual, Tommy did. I'd noticed it over the years. When we spoke on the walk home, just me and him, if I stopped to speak, he'd change his mind about whatever he was going to say and carried on without me, only tuning his head to the side to see if I'd catch up. So I'd learnt to never put too much importance on our quiet talks that we had in private.

"He came over to talk to Ada and we got chatting, I guess."

It hadn't been anything important. It was him being polite to Ada's friend, I was sure.

"You should stay away from him, he's bad news."

I rolled my eyes at him. Whenever me and Ada talked to boys that weren't Jack or his family, he didn't think they were good news and always told me so. It had made me laugh when I'd first clicked on to this and told him that he and his family were the worst news in Birmingham. He'd laughed loudly at that. Tommy Shelby laughing was a sight, indeed - it was like seeing a rainbow through the smoke of Birmingham centre: very very rare but a sight you couldn't take your eyes off no matter what.

"Are you rolling your eyes at me, Daisy Smith?" His voice was his usual deep monotone, but it had a teasing lilt to it. It made me glow like a kid when he teased me, or did anything with such familiarity to me. Especially when it was just me and him - it was intimate, almost, our walks home. It made my heart beat faster when he cocked his head in his "get your coat, we're off" way and I knew that for the nest fifteen minutes at least, it would just be me and him.

"Johnny's nice, Tommy. He was the only boy in there that you or Arthur haven't scared away from me and Ada yet."

"That'll change" I heard him mutter under his breath.

I laughed once, and nudged him playfully in his arm forcing him to drop the cigarette he was holding. Knowing how seriously he took his smoking, he was _always_ smoking, I snorted a laugh and dodged his arm and he reached out to push me back, a small close-mouthed grin on his face.

"Why would you want to inhale more smoke when we've got so much around here anyway?" I asked him for the millionth time; it was a running joke between us.

"Because not everyone is as innocent as you Daisy and once you've had a couple, it's hard to stop," he told me, looking down at the new cigarette he was lighting, still slowly walking forwards towards the place that housed only hatred towards me.

I walked alongside him, looking at him - I was always looking at him while he looked down or straight ahead or anywhere but at me, because these walks home were the only way I could look at him like I wanted to - and smiling disbelievingly at his words. "Innocent? Me? Have you not heard about all the trouble I get myself and your sister into?"

"That's just cause you've got a smart mouth and don't ever think before you say anythin'."

This was true. I'd learnt that early on - it was what always got me into trouble with Joe, who was always so careful to hit me in places no one could see after he'd bruised my eye and Tommy and Arthur had gone to talk to him about it. Now he just hit me on my stomach mostly, so Tommy couldn't see, and Joe had told me about his friends in the gypsy clan that the Peaky Blinders didn't like so much, and how he'd get them to pay Tommy a visit if I said anything to him. I was so used to being hit, and so worried about anything that'd ruin mine and Tommy's friendship, that I'd not told Tommy that Joe was still hitting me. My smart mouth often got me into trouble and trouble often got me walking with a hunch every now and then. I didn't really want Tommy to know I wasn't smart enough to avoid being hit, or tell Ada that I wasn't strong enough to stand up for myself like she would. Smart mouthed, yes, but smart minded?

My smile dropped as I thought about Joe and Tommy clearly noticed when he glanced up at my lack of reply.

We were quiet again, still walking agonisingly slowly down the road, as though neither of us wanted to reach the orphanage. _What a belly-warming thought_.

"Do you wanna try one?"

I looked up in surprise. Arthur had offered me and Ada many cigarettes in our time at The Garrison, but when Ada looked at him in disgust and told him that in no way was she going to smoke one of those things, I'd had no choice but to agree with her and say no.

"Really?"

He nodded, still taking drags of his. "I'd rather you try it with me than with someone like Johnny fucking Rich."

Rolling my eyes again, I wandered closer to him and took the cigarette he offered to me, holding it between my two fingers like I'd seen Polly do, rather than between a finger and a thumb like Tommy did. It looked more ladylike, and anything that made me look more feminine (cause God knows I didn't look much like a girl at all with my lack of hips and breasts) was a positive in my mind.

Feeling stupid, but older than my fifteen years, I stood there with this burning cigarette in my hand. "Um, what do I do?"

He smiled indulgently at me and explained, "Put it between your lips, suck on it and then inhale some more so you feel it in your chest, hold it, then breathe out."

I blushed a little bit at his explanation of it, and was grateful for the darkness that he couldn't see it. I did as he instructed… and spluttered out my breath in a hacking cough.

Waving my fingers in his general direction so he'd take the burning thing from me, I wiped my eyes to get rid of the water that'd gathered from my coughing. When my eyes opened again, I saw he was laughing over my coughs, his eyes a bright blue that was only intensified with laughter.

"You've really not done this before, have ya?"

Still coughing, albeit not nearly as hard as before, I looked at him with an irritated expression on my face. "I told you I'd never tried it, Tommy! Thanks for the bloody warnin'."

Throwing the burnt out cigarette to the floor, he put his hands in his coat pocket, still grinning a little. "Girls lie about things sometimes."

What an odd thing to say. Who would dare lie to Tommy Shelby? "Not me."

His smile slowly dropped and his expression got more serious as he stared at me. "No, not you."

It was only then that I realised that we'd stopped walking. He hated to stop walking, he liked our talks to be casual and light, but he had stopped and his expression was so intense that nobody could ever look at the two of us in that street and call us casual and light.

Finally, he reached into his pocket and got out another. "Come 'ere," he said with the cigarette in his mouth.

Swallowing deeply, I walked towards him, my red hair blowing across my face in a mess that prevented me from seeing him for a second. I pushed it away, and stopped when I was a meter or so away from him.

He cocked his head to indicate that I come even closer so, holding my breath, I did. Closer and closer until we were basically flush against each other. If I took another step we would be.

He inhaled his cigarette, and, bending down so his lips were _right next to mine,_ he paused for a moment, waiting for something. It clicked that he was waiting for me and, instinctively, I opened my mouth a little bit. He breathed out the smoke and I breathe it in. It didn't burn my throat and lungs this time; I just felt warm. I didn't think the smoke had anything to do with that though - just Tommy's closeness.

I expected him to lean back and continue walking down the street, but he didn't. He just stood there, his lips so so close to mine, and his eyes were glued onto mine. Blue into green.

Not wanting to ruin this moment, the moment I'd thought about only in my wildest dreams, I stayed silent and I didn't move. Just stared back at him.

Finally, I _had_ to ruin it. It was getting awkward and I didn't want to seem like a silly girl who didn't know how to behave around someone like him. So I cleared my throat a little, licked my lips and started to step back from him, before his hand shot out and grasped me around my neck. He exhaled sharply, harshly, as though he was mad or determined or frustrated, and in a magical moment, his lips crashed onto mine.

My upper body jerked back at the force of his kiss, but he counteracted it by using his other hand, cigarette thrown to the ground, to pull the small of my back closer against him so that I was arched into his warm, strong body.

It was everything I had ever wanted it to be. When Harry Waller had tried putting his tongue in my mouth all those years ago, I had found it disgusting, but when Tommy did it, I actually sighed into his mouth. Not knowing really where to put my hands, I decided to throw any caution I had to the wind and did something I'd wanted to do for years: I pushed off his cap so I could get even closer to him - careful to mind the razor blade I knew was tucked away in the front - and grasped onto the base of his neck, feeling the short hair coming through from when he'd last had it cut into the classic Peaky Blinder style.

The kiss lasted all of ten seconds, a forceful and passionate whirlwind of tongues, lips and hands, before he wretched himself away from me and did the same thing I'd done at twelve when Harry Waller had stopped kissing me - he wiped his mouth.

Frowning, I stepped forward after him, not understanding anything that had just happened. The kiss or the retreat. "What—"

I broke off when he bent down to get his cap and looked away from me, breathing hard through his nose.

"Fuckin' fifteen," I heard him say to himself.

I swallowed shakily, knowing what he was about to say. I was too young, too much of a kid to be able to handle someone like him, too naive, too silly.

"Daisy, you're—"

"I know what I am," I interrupted coldly, hurt by him pulling away. "I'm just a silly little girl." I laughed humourlessly, and started ambling back to the orphanage, not able to look back at him and see the regret in his face.

"I'll see you soon, I guess, Tommy."

He didn't follow me, insisting that he walk me the rest of the way like he always did. He didn't shout anything at me, and I didn't look back to see if he was still there once I got to the orphanage. I just walked inside, saw Joe sitting drunk at the kitchen table, and heard him slur, "What time do you call this?" as he stood up from his chair, his fists already clenching in anticipation.


	4. Part One: 4

A week later, he came to see me at the orphanage.

I'd heard his voice from the doorway asking for me, and my heart had started pounding so fast I thought for sure he'd be able to hear it. But when I walked to the door to see what he wanted, he looked at me like he always did.

I didn't speak.

Nor did he.

He started reaching his hand into his pocket to reach for his cigarette box, but then thought better of it and forced his hand down.

"Daisy I'm sorry about what happened."

There it was. The regret I'd been desperate for him not to feel. I closed my eyes briefly before opening them again and saying, with more courage than I'd thought I had, "I'm not."

"You're too young," he said conclusively, as though that explained everything away so easily.

"I'll be sixteen in a few months," I countered, trying to sound older like the girls I usually saw him with and the girls Arthur brought to the house on occasion. "There are girls my age gettin' married at sixteen. Girls younger than me who're pregnant already."

"Do ya really wanna be one of those girls, Dais?"

I huffed, "Of course not. I wasn't going to _fuck_ you, Tommy, I just wanted to kiss you." I threw the swear word in there for emphasis and when his jaw tightened a little and he looked to the side, I knew it had done what she intended. He always tensed his strong jaw when he felt some kind of emotion, usually anger or sadness, but didn't want to show it.

"You're five years younger than me."

"So?"

"You're my little sister's best friend."

"Yes?"

He rolled his eyes at me like he couldn't believe I wasn't understanding his point.

"I don't do girlfriends."

"Who said I wanted to be your girlfriend?"

He almost smiled at that. "Cause you're too good to be anything less than that to a boy."

"You're not a boy."

He _did_ smile at that. "Maybe when you're sixteen it won't be as bad…"

I scoffed. "It's four months away. What difference can four months make?"

"What do you want from me, Daisy?"

I looked down, not knowing how to answer the question. I didn't know how to answer that question.

"I want to kiss you more," I said decisively. "And have a right to be mad when I see girls rubbing up against you. Like Lizzie." Because I hated that.

He sighed quietly and didn't respond. We were silent for two whole minutes before I said something again.

"You talk to me more than you talk to anyone, Tommy," I whispered, feeling for a moment like the young girl he accused me of.

"I know," he muttered quietly back, as though he was reluctant to even admit it to himself.

Silence again.

"I need to talk to Ada before."

My heart stopped and my head whipped up. "What?"

He pointed a finger at me and tried to look serious, but I could see his eyes glowing brighter than they were when he showed up.

"No, Dais, don't get excited. I need to talk to Ada."

I smiled because Ada must, _must_, know I've fancied her brother since we were twelve. She just couldn't be against it. She was my best friend. She wouldn't ever say no to something that made me happy.

* * *

Ada wasn't happy, and she told me so the next day.

"He's my _brother_, Dais! He's so…old. And he can be mean sometimes. Why would you want to go out with him?"

I considered this for a moment, trying to decide how best to answer in a way that Ada would get. "Yaknow when you see Jack and your face explodes into a huge smile and you're _so_ _happy_ Ada? That's how I feel when I see Tommy."

She sat there looking at me like she'd never seen me before. "When did this even start?"

"We talk a lot on our walks home."

"I thought it was just something that'd go away, you fancying him. I didn't think it'd get to the point where he was on board with it too."

I stayed quiet, just hoping inside that she was okay with it. She continued to look at me, baffled, not saying anything. She clearly got that from her brother.

"I really like him, Ada," I told her quietly, grasping her knee. "He's the only one who doesn't look at me like I'm worth nothing."

"Oh, Daisy…"

She'd relented in the end. And by the time my sixteenth birthday came around, Tommy Shelby and I were officially together.

* * *

**Thank you for your support so far with this story! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I want to quickly mention that if this first part seems fast-paced, it's because I do intend for Part Two to make up the bulk of this work. The main story starts then; this is just an extended background, I suppose. **

**Thanks again!**


	5. Part One: 5

The year we had together was bliss. There was no other way I could describe it. He was never too openly romantic with me, not like Jack with Ada who were always together and always kissing, or holding hands, or holding each other. No, Tommy and I were more reserved than that. I think part of it was because I was sixteen while he was twenty, nearly twenty one, and also because I was so innocent in the ways of men. I'd never had a boyfriend before, hadn't even kissed anyone since Harry Waller, he'd put me off so much. I didn't know how to be in a relationship. I certainly didn't know how to be Tommy Shelby's girlfriend.

I wasn't even sure I could've called myself that. He never did. One day at The Garrison, he came over and sat with me, kissing me quick on the lips and then sitting down next to me. That was all. None of the Shelby's, other than Polly, looked alarmed, but the other customers did, especially the girls there who I knew fancied him. They looked as though they couldn't fathom how a poor, uneducated, orphan girl like me could capture the attention of _the_ Tommy Shelby. I heard Lizzie saying one day that it was only because I was a virgin that he was interested because he'd sampled every other girl in the city. When I'd told Tommy that he'd _really_ laughed, which was the best thing he could've done at that time because I'd felt so silly when I'd told him. I heard Margie, another one of the girls who liked him, saying it was because I was the only girl with hair as bright as mine or as curly in these streets, and everyone knew that Tommy loved strange and unique things.

Eventually I'd just asked him why he was with me one day, on one of our walks back to the orphanage.

He'd not even looked at me when he said, "Cause you're the only girl who's ever said no to me."

When I'd pointed out that I'd been nine when I said no, and had rarely said no to him since, he'd told me that once was enough.

After two months of being together, I finally brought up the sex question. Why hadn't he tried to do it with me yet? Didn't he want to? Was he worried I'd be terrible at it? (I was worried that I'd be terrible at it.) We'd been in a quiet alley across from The Garrison, him pressing me against the wall and kissing me with such passion that my knees had buckled and I was only upright because he was pressed so close against me.

"Tommy?" I mumbled against his mouth when I felt brave enough to bring it up.

"Mm?"

He moved to kissing my neck so deliciously I almost forgot what I was going to say.

"When are you goin' to have sex with me?"

He stopped kissing my neck, but stayed with his head in the crook of my shoulder. "Why are you askin' me that, Daisy Smith?"

I swallowed nervously. "Ava and Jack have done—"

He groaned, the sound vibrating through me and landing in my lower belly. "Don't talk about my sister when you're pressed up against me like this."

"Sorry…"

I felt him smile slightly against my skin. "You're always sayin' sorry for somethin'."

I grinned too, albeit shakily and I was glad he couldn't see it. "I've usually got something to apologise for."

"Not with me."

Remembering those months ago when I'd said, "not me," about lying, he'd replied gently with the same words I spoke then. "No, not with you."

He kissed my neck once before pulling back and looking at me. "Why are you askin' me about sex?"

I tilted my head slightly, wishing he was back there and I'd not said anything. "Do you… I mean… Do you want to…?" I said it quietly but I was amazed I could talk about it at all.

The only experiences I'd had talking about sex were the girls talking about how it wasn't for us, Ada talking about how it was, and Harry Waller telling me everyone thought I'd be a whore one day. It was a sore subject.

"Dais, if you don't understand what this means," he pressed against me harder so I could really feel the stiffness between his legs, "then you're even more innocent than I'd thought."

I exhaled harshly, gripping his arms tighter.

"I know what it means," I said, raising my chin a little and gaining more confidence. "It's just you've done nothing about it yet."

His blue eyes flashed. "Is that a challenge, Daisy Smith?"

We'd had sex two weeks later. It had hurt at first, like both he and Ada had warned me, but soon his hands rubbing circles on me and grasping my breasts, and his mouth kissing me, _kissing kissing_ me so hard I thought I might suffocate, had my body flooding with such exquisite pleasure rather than pain. He'd kept his eyes on mine the whole time, whispering every now and then how beautiful I was. I'd clutched onto him so tight and he'd grasped me back with equal ferocity, leaving my ribs with slight bruises. I didn't care - it was primal, and although I wouldn't admit it to anybody, it made me exceptionally happy that I'd had a temporary mark showing our passion. It was just for me and him, the way it always had been and always would be.

He'd seen the bruises Joe left me when he'd taken my dress off and was kissing his way down my chest, lingering on my breasts before going lower. He'd stopped at my ribcage and pulled away frowning.

"What are these?" He asked quietly, staring hard at the yellowing bruises on me.

"They're nothing," I insisted, just wanting his hands and mouth back on me again.

"Daisy." He'd used his serious voice on me again, speaking like I was one of his lackeys in the Blinders.

I sighed and turned my face away. "Joe doesn't like me much," I half joked, hoping to lighten the situation.

He'd frowned and glared at my stomach so hard it made me get self conscious. I started to pull my arms up to cover myself when he'd shaken his head and pulled my wrists into one of his hands and pulled them above my head.

He kissed me softly then, tenderly, and only said, "Don't keep things from me," before going back to kissing his way down my shaking body.

Then we hadn't been saying much of anything, just gasping and groaning against each other's skin, him whispering things he'd never said to me before and me doing the same.

"You're perfect, Dais…"

"Don't stop, Tommy…"

"So fuckin' pretty…"

"So…good…"

"I'm gonna make love to you every day from now on, Dais, don't you worry…" _I had laughed softly at this, feeling his grin between my breasts._

"I love you, Tommy…"

He'd not said it back, but his body had loved mine in a way I'd never expected. Ada had told me about how good it could be, and it was, but she'd not told me about how beautiful it was. It didn't feel like the "fucking" I'd heard Arthur and John talking about. This was something else. Something that'd been building for years and was finally coming into fruition.

I didn't regret telling him I loved him. I did. With all my heart. For the next year he showed me all the different ways he loved me. He quietly took my hand every now and then at The Garrison. He somehow managed to get Joe to never even look at me again, let alone beat me. He took me to London once when he went on a job and we'd made love with Big Ben visible from our window. He made me laugh. He made me laugh a lot - and I made him laugh in return with silly jokes I'd heard on the street. He argued with Polly when she told him I wasn't good enough for him. He defended me, sometimes too violently, when people shouted rude things at me. He came to me after fights to either calm him down or keep him riled up - I was always more than happy to go along with both. It was only after a fight did our sex ever feel like "fucking" - it was hard and rough and raw but still beautiful because it was _us_. He sometimes held me with such tenderness, like I might break if he held on too tight. He showed that he loved me when he spoke to me about his father, whom he didn't like at all, and told me things he'd never told anyone, not even Ada, not even Arthur or Polly. He showed me his love in so many different ways, so many beautiful ways in that blissful year we spent together.

He told me, verbally, that he loved me on my seventeenth birthday, nearly a year later. I cried silently into his shoulder when he finally said it. He made fun of me for crying and we made love and he whispered it in my ear over and over and over…

"_Daisy… I love you… I think I've always loved you, Dais…_"

He told me he loved me on my seventeenth birthday: the third of August 1914.

England went to war with Germany the day after.

Nothing was ever the same.

* * *

_End of Part One._

* * *

**It gets much MUCH more angsty from here on out. Enjoy this fluffy chapter because not much good comes again for a while. **

**As a warning, from the next chapter out you might start to hate me a little bit because of what I have planned for our characters, but please bear with me - I'm a sucker for happy endings, remember!**

**Thank you for your support!**


	6. Part Two: 1

Daisy Smith lies in a plush white bed, crisp and clean and smelling of fresh air. Looking around her, she sees the beautiful hotel room she is situated in. Claridges is always lovely, she thinks idly, running a hand through her messy curly hair and trying to tame it. They'd been dancing in the infamous Claridges ballroom the night before and her hair had come out of place.

The sex afterwards hadn't helped the mess either.

Rolling up so she sits with her legs over the edge of the bed, she looks over her naked shoulder at her companion.

James Lewis. A regular. A friend, actually. One of the many inordinately wealthy men she has sex with, keeps company with, for ridiculous amounts of money.

Standing up, her feet falling flush into the soft cream carpet, she pads over to the chaise where she's left her dressing gown and puts it on to brace against the chill of the balcony. Lighting a cigarette, she inhales deeply before releasing, her eyes closing with the relief of the burn. She hears the sounds from London below, the cool air brushing her naked things and cooling the sweat from her neck. The cigarette allows her to breathe properly again and she wonders why she didn't take this up sooner.

_Once you've had a couple, it's hard to stop._

She breathes in too suddenly when that memory creeps into her head and she coughs lightly. She thinks to herself, I know better than to think of him. Never think of him.

Missing in action, Polly had told her that day. No survivors. That fateful day where her world came crashing down around her. He was gone.

She still remembers the blank look on Polly's face. As though she was in shock. Too numb to even cry.

Daisy hadn't even stayed the rest of the day. Why would she ever want to remain in a place full of memories? Full of _him_?

Ada and her hadn't been as close since Daisy was fifteen, what with both of them falling in love so hard. So Daisy had simply written a letter to her supposed best friend - _but _he_ was her best friend_ \- saying she had to leave, that she couldn't stand to be there, that she was sorry, that she'd miss her, before getting on the next train to London.

She worked hard towards the war effort for two years before turning to prostitution. She made uniforms to send to the Front, more than she thought she could possibly ever make in her lifetime, let alone two years. Her fingers were numb, so numb and swollen at the end of every day, but all she could think of was him. What if it was him there? She'd want him warm. Every man at the Front was someone's Tommy. And the thought kept her going. For two years, barely making enough to eat, to pay rent, she struggled and suffered and the only thought that kept her going was "What if it was Tommy?"

By December of 1916, she had nothing left. The pitiful money she was getting from making the uniforms and helping out at hospitals couldn't pay for her room anymore, so she was homeless. Without an address, she wasn't getting any rations. No families in the poor area she was in could afford to take her in.

That was when he'd found her.

Or she'd found him.

Alfie Solomons.

He reminded her of Tommy in a lot of ways. Nobody expected much of him, but he always managed to surprise them, being far far more clever than anyone expected. He'd fought for over two years in France before being shot in the leg and was forced to come back to England in October. She'd attended to him in hospital for two months, trying to make him laugh - she used to make Tommy Shelby laugh, surely she could make anyone laugh - and trying her damnedest to heal him.

When he was well, he'd taken her in - the beautiful nurse who, although she made many jokes, never truly smiled with joy. Daisy soon found out that his job before the Great War was as illegal as Tommy's was. He gathered around him a team of men, all who had fought in the War and been sent back with only the horrors of war in their minds to keep them busy, and they started making alcohol to send to the front, or to sell on the black market. Alfie and his men made a significant amount of money, but because of inflation, it wasn't enough. It was never enough.

And Daisy earned a pittance from her own work.

When he'd suggested that she sleep with one of his friends, a wealthy friend who was pretty much keeping Alfie's company afloat, she'd screamed at him, had hit him, had cried at him.

He'd just allowed it, letting the woman who never smiled beat him with her small hands, before saying, "Just think about it, Flower," before walking away.

He was a ruthless man, she'd seen, but he had always been kind to her, always looked out for her. Had taken her in when she had nothing. Had supported her for months while she contributed minimal amounts to their income.

They needed the money that this friend of his was offering.

She knew it. He knew it.

So she did it; she slept with the man who was more than twice her nineteen years and who had no regard for her well-being or comfort. She cried the whole time.

She prayed for forgiveness to Tommy, who she knew had to be in heaven despite his misdeeds because he was so _good_ to her, afterwards, and she had laid in her bed in Camden for three days.

She was numb.

She had become what she'd sworn she never would. What everyone had told her she would be and she'd refused so vehemently.

_If you don't wanna be a whore, Daisy, don't be a whore._

She _was_ a whore. I can't tell these people down here to go fuck themselves, Tommy, she thought one day. There is a war. You are dead and you have taken a piece of me with you. I am starving. I have nothing. I need to help these men, these men who have been thrown out of the pits of hell only to have to come back to Camden and starve and grieve and heal and survive, but not live. We are all just walking ghosts of our former selves.

I can help them, she thought. I can save them.

_You saved me._

The men she was with held her, made her feel wanted. It was a shadow of the comfort Tommy had given her, but if she closed her eyes and pretended hard enough, she could imagine it was his hands that held her, his breath on her cheek.

She was a whore. She is a whore.

Daisy Smith is gone.

* * *

I**'m really nervous about posting this; I feel like you'll all hate me! Please just trust in me to sort this mess out. **

**Any comments are appreciated (especially after this chapter!) Thanks for reading.**


	7. Part Two: 2

She strides into Alfie's hovel - _why does he still do his business here with the amount of money he's making?_ \- with her head held high. She smiles blandly at the men who bid her a good morning and her eyes don't light up or even glow. Her small heels click against the ground, a rhythmic tapping that can alert everyone there of her arrival.

The best whore in England.

She's dressed in a drop-waist dress, a fashion she saw in Paris the previous month. 1920 was a beautiful year in Paris - they had started rebuilding in 1919 and the plants and flowers and crops and buildings were all starting to look like they should. The post-war buzz was so catchy - she'd danced a jazz in the clubs of Paris and she danced the same dances now in London with men who could afford to buy hundreds of these clubs. They pay her so handsomely, both in tender and with something that, to Alfie, was far more valuable than money: secrets.

She often reports back on the goings-on within the elitist circles on London to her good friend, her silent partner. He likes to keep tabs on people and what better way to do that than partnering with a small, waifish girl who nobody expects much of? Until they hear her name and they _know_ \- this is the woman who half of London would kill to be with and the other half hate for stealing their husbands from them. Nobody outside Alfie's organisation (but the first man she'd slept with for money) knows that her and Alfie are affiliated. Nobody would suspect. They all think her above such people; she almost snorts at the idea.

"Boss is in the office. Says he has a new friend who wants to meet you," Tiny says from the midst of the barrels as he sees her walking in.

She rolls her eyes. Of course he does; Alfie always had more plans in store for her, more people she had to fuck, more secrets she has to gather. Although, she thinks, it is strange that he is okay with being so openly attached to her. The friend must be special.

"Alfie is so lucky in his friends, don't you think Tiny? He has so many." She spins on her heels and continues walking backwards so she can grin saucily at Tiny. It's fake and they both know it. Everyone in this building has seen her pretend so many times that they can now all see what is real and what is not. Smiles are never real. She is an ice queen. The Ice Queen of London who everyone wants to melt.

She taps lightly on the door to his office before Alfie lets her through. She thinks to herself, I should make more of an effort with my introductions to potential customers - Alfie would like that more and maybe they'll stop trying to "make me happy", as a client had told her the week before. Besides, she thinks, he must be important. So she plasters a smile on her face, her perfectly rouged lips quirking up at one corner more than the other.

The smile falls when she walks into the room, and her breath comes short and her vision blurs.

She nearly falls down.

She nearly cries.

She nearly screams with sheer joy and disbelief.

Her mouth forms in a perfect 'o' as the men in the room turn to look at her and she can see his face from the front now rather than just his profile.

He is exactly the same yet so so different. His facial expression doesn't change but she sees - she always sees - his jaw click from him clenching his teeth.

"Tommy." It is a whisper, a breath, a prayer, from her lips.

Chaos erupts in the room.

* * *

"What the fuck is she doing here?"

"Get the fucking whore out of here!"

These come from Arthur Shelby and his brother John, who looks so much older than when Daisy saw him last. She remembers the way he used to play with her and Ada and indulge in their every whim; Arthur too.

Now they look furious to see that she's alive and well, breathing the same air as them - for some strange, strange reason, they despise her.

Tommy says nothing and she doesn't know whether to be elated or destroyed by this. Why isn't he happy to see her? The last time she'd seen him, six years ago, he'd whispered those beautiful words over and over in her ear, making her shiver with both pleasure and sheer unadulterated love.

She'd thought him dead and he is here - this is a _miracle_, she thinks elatedly, despite never being one for God or religion.

Ignoring the men who are still arguing and shouting around her - Alfie is up out of his chair and arguing back, his large frame taking up too much room in the office - she takes a few steps forwards, her usual elegance and poise forgotten as she stumbles, desperate for a touch of him.

He takes a step back and she thinks she can her her heart stop for a beat and break a little more than it was already broken.

She frowns in confusion - why won't he let her near him? He's been _dead_ for years… she needs to touch him to make sure he's real…

He looks so dapper in his suit, his hands in his pockets so casually. He's always loved being casual, she thinks with an internal grin. But she notices something else too, a hardness to him that wasn't there before. His face used to be cool and collected but it's pure ice now. His eyes that used to shimmer with happiness when they looked at her were… indifferent. If it wasn't for the click in his jaw that she recognised, that's what she'd say he looks like - completely, heartbreakingly indifferent. To _her_.

In the end, her gaze is taken away from him when Alfie literally shoots a hole through the ceiling, breaking the plaster in a small corner and effectively silencing everyone in the office.

She blinks dazedly at Alfie, her mind still grasping onto the blissful chant of "he's alive, he's alive, he's here in this room with me, and alive…"

Alfie sits back down in his chair, runs a hand through his hair first and then his beard and looks around at us all.

"What the fuck is going on between you Blinders and Fleur?"

Arthur scoffs and runs his own hand through his hair to flatten and straighten it. "Is that what she's callin' 'erself now? A fancy French name, as though people don't know what she is - a dirty fuckin' whore."

He spits the words at her, looking her up and down in her fancy French dress with her fancy French name and finding her wanting.

"Fleur, what the fuck's goin' on?" Alfie says to her quietly, more baffled than she is by this turn of events. Clearly he had not brought Tommy here for her to please him - he never showed his face to customers. He doesn't know about her old lover, he doesn't know much about her at all now she thinks about it. Her closest confidant knows nothing - if that doesn't say much of her character, she thinks, nothing will.

_"Why Fleur, Alfie?" she asked one day as they overlooked the docks. "What's wrong with Daisy?"_

_"You're my flower, Flower. And you need somethin' to separate who you are with who you're pretendin' to be."_

_"I like Daisy," she whispered into the cold air, not sure if he heard her. _He_ used to like my name, would say it over and over. Daisy Smith. Daisy Smith. _

Is that a challenge, Daisy Smith?

_Her heart hurt._

_"Fleur makes you sound like something these men can't get at any whorehouse in England. If we're gonna do this properly, you're gonna be making more than every other whore in the country put together. And you can't be doing that with a name like a little girl."_

"Dais?" Alfie snaps her back to attention by using her real name. He does it so seldom these days.

"I don't know," she whispers back truthfully because if there's one thing in all the world that she certainly does not understand it's what is happening in this room right now.

John rolls his eyes and takes a threatening step towards her but he stops when Alfie stands up suddenly. "What the fuck is going on here?" He asks again, this time louder - Alfie never raises his voice.

Nobody answers him, but Tommy takes out a cigarette - my heart squeezes painfully - and starts smoking slowly. "This is who's gonna get me all of Sabini's secrets, eh?"

Frozen, comprehension dawning, she stares at him in disbelief. This man who she has loved more than she had ever thought possible... wants to pay her _money_ to sleep with someone…else? With Sabini? The Italian man he speaks of is insane. Rich, but not nearly sane enough for her to willingly sleep with him. Especially now… she's not sure she can sleep with anyone else ever again now she knows he's alive. There is only one person she ever wants close to her again… and he's still staring at her as he puffs away, smoke billowing around him.

"Sabini? What…" She's not been this ineloquent since 1914. She needs to get it together.

When no one speaks to clarify anything for her, Alfie says, "Mr Shelby wants to hire you for… purposes other than…the usual." He says this slowly, as though trying to find the right words as he goes along. He doesn't understand what's going on, but the look in Daisy's eyes right now isn't something he wants to contribute to. She's been like marble for the last four years and this is the first time he's seen her looking so… emotional. He remembers the time he put forward the idea of sleeping with someone for money and she cried and screamed at him - since then, she's been stoic. Like a machine, just making them money, helping him build his criminal empire down here in London. He's not sure he likes this look on her face - she looks like she's floundering. Alfie can't afford to have his main source of income floundering.

"To sleep with someone else?" She asks the question but she already knows the answer. She knows how Tommy thinks - he wants to take over London. He's looking for Sabini's secrets and talking with Alfie Solomons. It could only be that one thing if he's talking to the two main crime lords in the heart of London. Tommy wants in on it. And he wants to hire 'Fleur' to help him.

"Shouldn't be too hard for ya. We hear you open your legs to anyone and anything these days." Arthur is so cold, and bitter and all she wants to know is why.

Why, if Tommy was alive, hadn't he come looking for her? Hadn't written to her? Why was Arthur acting as though she's single handedly started the War? Why was Tommy so indifferent towards her?

_I think I've always loved you Dais…_

"You were dead," she croaks, grasping onto the nearest table for support.

"Only to you, it seems," Tommy says back, staring right through her like she was a stranger.

"Not to me," she says so quietly, he doesn't hear her. He mustn't hear her, she thinks, because he doesn't say, "No, not to you" back. He doesn't say anything back. He just smokes and seems completely unaffected. She, on the other hand, has never been so affected in her life and it clearly shows.

What is it they call her, she thinks. _Ah_ _yes_. The Ice Queen nobody can melt.

Tommy Shelby hasn't melted her, she thinks forlornly. He's smashed her into a million pieces.

* * *

**Thanks for reading; hope you're still enjoying! Comments are always appreciated!**


	8. Part Two: 3

She is stood outside smoking furiously in an attempt to calm her nerves. Alfie had kicked her out of the room after it had looked like she was about to burst into tears - _Fleur! Burst into tears! _\- since he didn't trust her to keep this "professional". Of course, he doesn't understand that this is anything _but_ professional, and just the fact that it's meant to be 'professional' makes it all the more personal to her. The love of her life looks at her like she is worthless - the only boy who never did when she was younger - and wants her to sleep with someone else. For money. For secrets. Because that is who she is now - a whore. A good whore, and a rich whore, but a whore nonetheless.

She has been numb for years to her profession. She just does it. She has sex, meaningless sex, in which she plays her part. Whatever that man wants. A fetish played out. A lover to pretend to love. A companion to talk to. Or she could be hired simply because a rich man's son wants to fuck a prostitute for his first time. They are the worst; the ones who treat her like a piece of meat. She is used to it and doesn't complain, but it stings. She has become everything she spent years worrying about as a child. Was it inevitable? Someone so poor like her couldn't have had many options set before her in her life. This was one of them, and many people told her she was incredibly lucky to have worked her way so high within elitist society. She was fucking members of the government, foreign ministers, self-made millionaires… she'd even fucked a prince once. They told her she was lucky. She should be proud of herself.

Maybe a hidden, secret, dark part of her is. _Look at me now, Harry Waller. I have connections in circles you can't even dream of being near. _

It is only when she is alone that she feels the guilt, the hurt, the shame of what she is doing every night. What would Tommy think of her? Would he be hurt? Understanding that she'd done what she had to do to survive? Ashamed to have known her? To have loved her?

She's often wondered this over the years and now she knows the answer. He does not understand. He is disgusted. She doesn't know if she can bear it, but she doesn't know how to change it. She is what she is, what his death did to her. Now that he's alive again… what will she do?

She isn't startled when someone comes to stand by her, but she doesn't expect someone to approach her so soon after the chaos in the office, so she does blink in surprise, almost dropping her cigarette.

"Didn't think you smoked."

Her heart stops; she knows that voice, although time has made it gruffer, harder and war has made it colder. He sounds even more to-the-point than he usually does. She's not sure she likes it purely because it's not the same voice that told her 'I love you' on that beautiful summer's night.

It had been warm, she remembered. That summer was glorious, the best in her life. She was barely at the orphanage, just spending all her time with Ada and Tommy, though not together. Ada was just as wrapped up in her beau as she was with Tommy, but they still tried to remain friends Ada got her days and Tommy got her nights. He always smiled when he saw her, she remembers. Not a big smile of an overly-contended, bragging to the world man. Just a small grin that made his eyes shine and her heart start racing.

The night had been the best of her life.

She says nothing in response, not knowing what he's here to say. Is he here to ridicule her? To explain why he hasn't found her? Why he hadn't bothered to tell her he was alive?

After a whole three minutes of silence, it becomes clear that he's even less verbose than he used to be.

She sighs. She's not sure she can muster up the courage to ask him, because what if his answer makes her feel even worse than she does already? Is that even possible?

"Why?" Her voice is quiet and timid, like the girl who had lost her parents at age three rather than the world-class lover who could make grown men cry if she wanted. "Why didn't you contact me?"

"You left Birmingham. You became a whore." He says it like it is obvious and she feels like the stupid little girl who dared to kiss him when she was fifteen.

"Because I was told that you were dead." It was the worst day of her life. Until now. Although she has to recognise that it is also one of the best, because she now knows that he is alive. Tommy Shelby is still on this Earth and her heart beats stronger with that knowledge. It is still broken. but it is reassured. It's other half is not gone… just lost.

She hears him take a drag of his cigarette. A long one. "I didn't realise you were waiting for me to be out of the picture. Didn't wait very long did you, Daisy? Sorry, _Fleur_."

Her eyes start to sting with unshed tears. He is being cruel and she still doesn't know why.

"Please don't call me that, Tommy. That's not who I am." She is whispering in a throaty voice, her neck muscles straining to not set free the sobs that are lingering there.

"If I'm hiring you for my purposes, that means you're my client now. Or I'm yours. Why shouldn't I call you Fleur? If it's a name reserved for people who fuck you, I've already done that." His face screws up at this in a sardonic, nasty way. He doesn't look like Tommy. He looks like a monster.

Her breath exhales shakily. He would never have been this cruel. What has war done to him? What has _she_ done to him? Has he come out here just to torment her?

"Maybe I should pay you for the services you rendered to me, eh?" His voice has quietened, almost like he doesn't actually want to say those words which offer little support or comfort to her.

She hadn't thought it could get worse. It just did.

Her eyes shut in pain and a few tears escape. Her chest feels heavy.

He has just ruined the best night of her life. The only time in her life when she was happy and joyous and young and so so in love.

She opens her eyes and turns to look at him, her eyes full of betrayal, anger and pure devastation. The second he sees them, his jaw clicks again and his eyes turn to the side. She sees the look of regret in them, but she doesn't care. They both know that was too far.

She pulls her arm back and slaps him harshly across his cheek, her eyes leaking more tears as she does it. He does nothing but look away over the docks, his jaw as tense as it had been since he saw her; she stares at him brokenly for a few moments, disbelieving and outraged and heartbroken, but only long enough for her to see the red welt beginning to blossom on his cheek. She hopes it hurt, because she's not sure she's ever hurt this much. Not even when Polly said he was dead. This is worse: she is dead to him now, surely - otherwise he _couldn't_ have said those things.

She walks back into the building, not being able to bear looking at his face anymore, her heels still tap tap tapping against the concrete floors.


	9. Part Two: 4

She doesn't know what to think. Not after that. After that, she is through feeling guilty. She has just paid for her mistakes and shame with every happy memory of her life. With the past love and hope she'd once felt, the love that he had just torn to pieces right in front of her eyes.

How. Dare. He?

She's never had much in her life but what she does have, or did have, was the knowledge that for a year, maybe several if she counts the love she had for him since their first meeting, she had the love of a man who notoriously did not fall in love. She had loved, and been loved, and it was the only thing that kept her going through the harshness of the war years. And he's ruined it all with a few cruel words.

Tommy Shelby has always been harsh, but he's always been fair. That has changed tonight - he was not fair, or merciful or understanding on this night. He'd been cold. A pale sliver of the man he once was.

She spends the evening in her large bath in her penthouse suite. She runs it and re-runs it when it gets cold. By the time she leaves to go to bed, her skin is so prune-like she almost smiles. She doesn't though; she simply crawls into bed, naked, sits there, surrounded by lush pillows and elaborate furniture, and she cries.

* * *

The next time she sees him, they are at a up and coming night club in London centre. It is full of jazz music and the men and women dancing the new dances that rose from the hardships of war. They are full of life and joy, their faces smiling and laughing as they jump around, the feathers in the girls' headpieces swaying gently.

Daisy doesn't dance tonight. She sits on the lap of the owner in the back corner, smiling idly as he whispers sweet nothings in her ear. He speaks to her of how he knows she loves him because she always comes back. He's the only one who can make her come apart in the bedroom, he says. She doesn't say anything to encourage or discourage him, she just lets him say these things and grasp tightly around her small waist that has only gotten smaller in the last few weeks.

Tommy Shelby has ruined both her memories and her appetite, it seems.

When he walks into the bustling club, surrounded by his usual Blinders in their flat caps - a stark contrast the the glittering feathers on heads in this room - it's like her body instantly recognises that its counterpart is here; she looks over immediately and, by some coincidence, so does he.

His eyes go first to her face, then to the hands around her waist and then to the man she perches gently on, before snapping back to her eyes again. His expression is inscrutable. She is still mad and hurting from their last encounter - would she ever not be hurt by it? - so she just sneers slightly and turns away. She can't bear to look at him, especially not when she's with another man. Almost subconsciously, she pries Edward's hands from her waist and moves to sit on her own chair, facing away from the entrance.

She can't bear to see his judgement. Not after what he did. _Not after what she's done_.

"Are you alright, Fleur?" Edward asks from her side, his tone confused.

She throws him what she hopes is a comforting smile as she catches the nearest waiters eye and asks for another glass of champagne.

She doesn't register a man approaching Edward to lean down into his ear, and she certainly doesn't notice him nodding along.

"Do you mind me conducting some business quickly, my dear?"

She realises, a little slowly, that he is talking to her. She looks at him over her shoulder and shakes her head. "Not at all darling." Her voice is empty like her heart is, and she knows that he doesn't notice a single thing wrong when his face smiles back at her.

She doesn't look back again at him until she hears _his_ voice, and then her head can't whip around fast enough.

"Mr Falcon," he says, his voice almost huffing the words as though he hates having to speak them.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," she hears Edward reply, looking up at him with confusion.

She knows Tommy hates this. He's so used to his reputation proceeding him.

"Tommy Shelby." He announces it as proud as anybody with that name would, because although Edward doesn't know who he is, everybody north of Gloucester does. They know he is dangerous, they know the Peaky Blinders are not to be messed with. That was the case in 1914, and she has only heard tales of how the Blinders have moved up impossibly further. At the time, she hadn't bothered listening too much because it hurt her to even think of him; but now she knows Tommy is alive and surely at the head of the organisation, she tries to recall every little detail she's heard about them. They are deadly. They are smart. They are cunning.

People speak of "they" as though they are discussing the Blinders, but she knows they're inadvertently discussing him. She knows they are - she knows his intelligence and his thrill for his job… but unfortunately for Edward, he does not.

"Shelby… doesn't your brother Arthur lead that gang we've been hearing so much about? The Peaky Blinders?"

Daisy looks past Tommy to see Arthur behind him, rubbing frantically at his nose and breathing in deeply, not even paying attention.

No, she thinks. It is definitely Tommy leading this criminal gang.

Tommy doesn't dignify the question with an answer. "I 'ave a business proposition for you."

Edward sighs with tiredness, running his hands over his face. "I'm a little busy right now." he indicates towards me, his eyebrows rising to emphasise the meaning behind his words: I want to fuck her, leave so I can do so.

Tommy looks over at me blandly, looks me up and down again before glancing back to Edward. "She'll live."

She knows how easy it would be to cause a scene and demand that Edward give her his attention instead of Tommy. It would mean Tommy's proposition would go unheard and forgotten within minutes. She could stop one thread of his career in London with a simper and a meaningful look towards Edward.

She knows this for sure. She doesn't think Tommy does; doesn't think that he understands the power she holds down here. She is not Daisy Smith here, the little orphan girl who loved him in all the ways a girl can love a boy. Here, she is Fleur, the world class prostitute who makes men believe whatever they want to. She had all the power here… and she doesn't think Tommy knows it.

She knows that she could ruin him with a few visits to her "friends".

She also knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would never do that. No matter what cruel things he says to her.

He broke her the week before, but still she remembers all the times he fixed her in the past. He could say the cruelest things to her, hurt her in a plethora of ways, and she would still never undermine him in this way.

So she turns to Edward and smiles, even though her heart is in her throat and she has to force the words out as casually as she can. "Don't worry about me, darling. I'll be upstairs."

She tries to stand up and saunter off casually, but her knees shake due to Tommy's closeness and she wobbles a little when she stands. Later, she'll talk herself out of what her eyes see, tell herself she imagined it, but when she wobbles on her heels, she sees Tommy flinch and reach a hand up - maybe a whole five inches - to steady her. It stops as soon as his brain registers that he hates her, and he returns to being stoic and resolute in his businessman mode.

She tells herself later that she didn't see it.

But Tommy did. _He_ tells himself later than it didn't happen - nobody but him witnessed it surely - but he knows it did because it had taken a conscious effort to bring his hand back down. Like his body couldn't help but want to help hers.

Daisy sits upstairs on an uncomfortable, but expensive, chaise and smokes slowly as she waits for Edward. She doesn't know how tonight will play out - the last thing she wants to do is pretend she is Fleur and have sex. But she can't be Daisy right now… Daisy would want to run back downstairs and fling herself into Tommy's arms and beg him to love her again.

She is torn between her two personas, torn between who she is and who war has made her. She wonders if Tommy is too. Does he remember the fun they had? The laughter and the love? Can he remember the winter night she ran to his house in the early hours of the morning because it had snowed and the only person she'd wanted to see was him? Could he remember the snowball fight they'd had, him eventually winning and pinning her down into the snow and kissing her senseless as they laughed against each others lips? It had been just them in the bitter chill of the street in 1913. She hadn't cared about the cold wetness on her back, or the way her nose had turned to ice. All she cared about was Tommy's lips on hers and her hands around his neck as he kept her warm with his body`and his care and attention.

God, she'd loved him. And he'd loved her.

Did the man downstairs remember any of this? Had war tarnished every good memory of his? Had her actions?

And what of _his_ actions? He'd not even let her know he was alive. Nor had Ada, or Polly. Why had nobody told her? She wouldn't have ever turned to this life if there was even the slightest chance that he was waiting for her. She would have waited for him for decades if she knew he was the prize at the end. She would never had sought out the company of other men, the warmth of their bodies in a pathetic imitation of him.

She has made a lot of mistakes. But so has he.

She needs to know. She needs to know what happened. She can't live this way, questioning everything, trying to assimilate the Tommy she knew to the Tommy downstairs.

And to do this, she can't be sleeping with other men.

So she leaves the room, ignoring his security when the large man asks her where she is going. She simply walks out of the back entrance, hails a cab and goes back to her cold, barren apartment. As soon as she garners the courage, she declares to herself, she will get the answers she desperately, desperately needs.

And she'll be damned if Tommy doesn't answer them.

* * *

**Sorry for the slight filler chapter. The real confrontation, I suppose, is in the next chapter so this was a necessary step. Hope you're all still enjoying despite the somewhat doom and gloom thus far... ;)**

**Thanks for reading! Any comments are, as always, really appreciated and taken on board.**


	10. Part Two: 5

It is not hard to find out where Tommy is staying. Alfie knows for professional purposes; nothing is a secret to that man, mostly because of the information she feeds him, but sometimes simply because he is a smart man who likes to be in the know. And thank God, for she had urgently visited his offices earlier to find out where Tommy's staying during his visit to London. Somewhere quiet, she thinks, and she is right. The area she stands in is a dark and quaint street, with glowing amber streetlights guiding her way to the door.

She hesitates a little before she knocks, but eventually sighs at herself - _don't be so silly_ \- and knocks loudly three times.

He doesn't answer the first time; it takes her three tries, each attempt getting louder than the last. He eventually answers the door, not fully dressed - he wears his trousers and a white vest, his braces hanging uselessly down his legs. She tries - and fails - not to look at his lean but muscular arms or the expanse of his chest on show. She remembers a time she fell asleep on it, and he'd told her later than it was calming to him listening to her breathe so closely to him. He used to match his breathing with hers. He didn't think she noticed, but she did. She noticed everything he did.

He doesn't look pleased to see her. He doesn't say anything, just continues to look at her with an expression that clearly says, "What do _you_ want?" and not in a nice way. He is always looking at her, she thinks self-consciously. She used to love it but now it only unsettles her - does he hate looking at her? Does she remind him of the people they used to be?

She clears her throat and remembers why she is here: for answers. She is not leaving without them.

"You got your part out of your system last week Tommy. It's my turn now. Why? Why did you not let me know you were alive?" Her teeth are clenched trying to hold back her emotion but in the end, she unfortunately hears the tremor in her voice.

He stares blankly at her as though she didn't speak, before looking away to the floor and sighing a little. He opens the door wider in an invitation to come in and her spirits lift a little - he is, she hopes, cooperating.

"Want some tea?" He asks, all civilly, as though the last time he spoke to her he hadn't broken her in a way she hadn't even known she could break.

"I want some answers, Tommy."

He unclips his suspenders and throws them carelessly on the back of a sofa that he then indicates she sits on. She slowly takes the seat, and he sits opposite her, pulling out a cigarette and a packet of matches before lighting up.

"I didn't contact you after the war because of the stories I'd 'eard. Men speak about their conquests but soldiers speak more. Everyone on the front lines had 'eard of you by the time 1918 came around, Daisy. The greatest whore in England, they called you. A small girl with no family, bright red curls and from the north, from Birmingham. It could have been anyone, but I knew…" He trails off, his expressionless tone quietening. He says this all like he is reciting the news rather than the tale of tragedy he is revealing to her. Having to hear that when at the front… she can't even imagine it. If she'd heard stories of Tommy sleeping with hundreds of girls, she isn't sure she wouldn't have hated him either.

"I thought you were dead," she repeats again, as though it makes it okay. Does it? Does it make it okay? When torn between sleeping with wealthy men and starving to death, homeless and cold and alone… could anyone begrudge her?

"So you say."

It's strange, she thinks… his tone is disbelieving.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He breathes out. "I was high up in the army, Daisy. I never even went missin'."

She frowns confusedly. "What?"

He doesn't respond and just lets her sit and think this through. He was never even missing? But…

"But Polly said…Polly told me…"

He looks up at her. "Polly told you what? That I was dead?" He scoffs, rolling his eyes slightly as he takes another drag.

Her life is continuing to fall apart around her and he's rolling his eyes.

"Yes!" She chokes, staring at the floor now. What on earth did this mean? Polly…what? Lied to her? Received faulty information that he was dead? What had happened? If Polly had been told falsely, why hadn't she written to Daisy letting her know? She had a right to know.

Now it is his turn to frown. "She never told me she thought I was dead." He says it to himself, not to her.

She exhales shakily, bringing a hand to her neck and wiping the sweat that has formed along the back of it. That was the problem of having long thick hair - the heat. The heaviness. It seemed to be a trend at the moment for women to cut their hair short - a liberation, almost. She had thought about it, but she wasn't sure she could ever part with her hair. She loved it long and flowing, like it always had been.

"Well she told me."

He smokes again, always smoking, always watching, before saying, "Tell me."

He doesn't clarify what he means and he doesn't need to - she knows. He wants the whole story, from the second he left to the moment they reunited.

She tells him everything. From the bone-deep sadness when he'd left her and her determination to do whatever she could to help him and the war effort in his absence. How she'd made uniforms, helped within the factories and tried to help look after Ada and Tommy's family; they'd had a new addition to their clan in the form of young Finn who at the time had been a terrible toddler. She had played with him when Ada or Polly needed a break, much to Polly's dismay since she didn't like Daisy and had never made any pretences about it. She had done everything she could think of to help. She'd stopped talking back to Joe, who (naturally) hadn't left for the front, so he didn't have any excuse to beat her which would hinder her help.

She tells him about the gut-wrenching despair she'd felt when Polly had told her. The tears she'd cried, the way she'd wailed and vomitted. The way she had seen the park where they met, and the orphanage he'd walked her to every night, and the Garrison where they'd laughed and kissed and the city where they had loved… and how she didn't recognise any of it. Didn't want to be around any of it. Couldn't bear to have any reminders of what she had lost - her family. All her friends apart from Ada, who was so focused on her family at that time. And then Tommy.

She tells him of her time in London, helping at hospitals and talking to the wounded soldiers and how she pretended that they were him. She tells him of her room in Camden which had rats and damp and more than once, men had broken into it and taken what little she had, and even tried to rape her once. She tells him of meeting Alfie in the hospital, tells him of the hunger she faced and the cold, and the loneliness of the last two years.

And she tells him of how Alfie had put forward the idea that she sleep with someone for money. How upset and horrified she'd been. How desperate she had been, how desperate they had all been. How, for once in her life, Daisy Smith was the answer, the solution. She tells him, not in detail because she didn't think he'd want to hear, the way she'd sobbed through her first time. How uncaring the man had been for her wellbeing at the time. How empty she'd felt after, but how, for a split second during it, he'd sighed into her ear and she had imagined it was Tommy… and that had made it bearable. It hadn't broken her, only cracked the facade of indifference she'd created around herself.

She tells him of the friends of the man after him, how he had told everyone how beautiful she was. How… unconquerable her emotions were to everyone in London. Men love a challenge, Alfie had said. She was that challenge. And she tells him how she did it over and over, trying to find something to fill the hole inside of her heart, and how the sighs, the needing, the groaning of her companions could temporarily do so… all because she could imagine they were him.

Her voice is monotonous throughout; she has to tell the story like it isn't even her story to tell. She must disconnect herself, otherwise she will break down and sob right here in his living room.

"And then you were there, Tommy…" She whispers at last. "You were there and alive and everything I had ever done came crashing around my ears. You knew… I could see it in your eyes that you knew what I'd done in your absence. I had thought… thought that maybe you would understand. After all, it was war. I had held out hope for two years that you were actually alive. I was so tired, Tommy. So hungry and cold and alone and tired. But you didn't understand… you were disgusted with me. You _are_ disgusted with me." She feels a lone tear streak down her face and she quickly wipes it away with a trembling hand.

"Didn't you think it odd that I wasn't in Birmingham when you got back, Tommy? Didn't you think I might've wanted to know that you were okay, even if you hated me for what I'd done? Didn't Ada? Didn't Polly? I loved you with all of my heart, all of my body and all of my soul… and you didn't even write me a _letter_. Not even an angry one," she laughed a little, her eyes filling with even more water. _Christ, if the men of London could see her now_, she thinks.

He clears his throat, his cigarette long forgotten on the ashtray upon the coffee table. "And what if I 'ad? Hm? Would it have been any different?"

"Of course it would have!" She declared fiercely. "I would have rushed back to Birmingham two years ago and by force or coercion, I would have made you forgive me and love me again."

"I wouldn't have let you stay in my city."

"I wouldn't have given you a choice."

They are quiet.

"I came back," he starts, his voice almost a whisper it is so quiet, "from Hell, Daisy, to hear that you were in London fuckin' other men for money. That you'd left early on in the war… and you'd not bothered to stick around and wait for me. Pol said you couldn't handle the uncertainty. That you'd left with another man."

She swallows thickly. "And you believed her?"

"I told you I heard stories. Hearin' that the girl you spent the last four years plannin' on marryin' is fuckin' half of London isn't… nice."

She closes her eyes in pain. Marrying? He wanted to marry her? She'd have said yes in a heartbeat. They both know it.

There is a long pause. "What would you have done in my position?" She has to know. Would he have stayed in the place that was haunted with memories? With the ghosts of their past?

He lets out a long breath and says, "I don't know, Daisy."

Silence again, until she whispers, "How long would you have waited for me after hearing I was dead before you found someone else to ease your discomfort?"

"Is that what it was?"

"No. I told you… I was desperate. I needed money, and yes, I admit, I needed someone to care, even if just for five minutes."

"I'd have waited."

"For how long?" She pushes, wanting some form of justification for her actions.

"I'd have waited," he replied simply, not answering her question at all.

"Emotionally, maybe. But we both know you'd have sought out the likes of Lizzie Poole soon enough." She says it softly, trying to ease the pain her words cause her. They both know he'd have taken up a lover, maybe not one he was emotionally connected with, but someone to care for his needs.

"Maybe."

"So it would have been okay for you to fuck Lizzie Poole but I am shunned and disgraced for taking lovers as well?"

"You didn't take up a lover, Daisy, you _became_ Lizzie Poole! Worse than her! At least she still 'as 'er integrity!" He is shouting almost now, but she is used to his anger… he has never frightened her and he likely never will.

She stands up out of anger and snaps, "I was lonely and starving, Tommy!"

"I was lonely too! I didn't fuck the whores that were offered in France!"

"Well good for you!"

"You waited two years! I waited _four_ and you still want me to feel sorry for you!"

"Why do you hate me for being like Lizzie, who I'm sure eventually got her turn since you got back?"

"Because you're Daisy!" He yells this, reaching down to bang his fists against the table in front of them. He exhales sharply as he stands up, towering over her with a face like thunder. His voice is quieter and more controlled when he expands, "You were _my_ Daisy. The only innocent thing in our dirty city. The only thing I'd ever loved. And you ruined it."

"I did what I had to do, Tommy. Don't you dare judge me for that."

"You lost everything good about you the second you decided to sleep with Alfie's friend." He sneers the words at her, his eyes blazing. At least he is not indifferent anymore, she thinks to herself sadly.

"I lost everything good about me the second Polly told me you were dead."

That stumps him. He stares hard at her, not quite sure he heard her correctly. "I was the worst thing about you Daisy, we both always knew that."

She swallows again, and involuntarily mutters, "Not to me."

As he walks over to the window, she hears him sigh, "No. Not to you."

She is slowly asking, "So what now?" when they both hear a knock on the door. Neither of them move to answer it; they both just look at each other, both trying to reconcile the people they once knew to the people in this room.

The door sounds again and Tommy shakes his head. "It doesn't matter now, Dais. You're not my Daisy anymore. You're Fleur now."

She walks quickly over to him. She looks him dead in the eye before saying fiercely, meaning every word, "Of course it matters, Tommy."

Again, the door sounds, this time more insistently.

She gathers her handbag and turns to face him again. "I'll see you soon. This isn't over."

She thinks he'll say something cruel again, just to hurt her some more, but instead he surprises her with a nod. At least neither of them are pretending any more.

She says goodbye with her eyes, not able to say anything else - she's said all she has to say for now - before walking down the stairs, him trailing behind her to walk her out and greet his guest.

The air is cold when the door opens and it takes her breath away. So does the pretty blonde girl standing on the other side of it.

Both girls are surprised to see the other.

They both hear Tommy reluctantly mutter, "Grace," in greeting but they don't look at him. They simply examine each other, as though on some level, they both recognise the same thing: this is the competition. This is the other one Tommy has loved.

Daisy's heart, gut and soul, clench painfully when she sees the look between Grace and Tommy. He has loved her too, she sees. She hadn't expected this.

_Why? He is loveable and kind and smart and handsome and strong and you lost any claim you had on him when you fucked a man for money._

She knows this. She knows this all too well, hence why she is at this house trying to make it up to him, trying to understand what happened to them. He is the only person she has ever loved and she will be damned if she lets that go without a fight.

She also knows that this girl, this innocent looking girl with the spark of strength in her stance and her eyes, is better suited for someone like Tommy. She, too, is smart and a fighter. Daisy can tell; it is her job to read people. She can tell that this woman has loved Tommy too, loved the _new_ Tommy. She wonders how that love compares to the love they had when they were younger. The young, innocent love they had shared… did it hold a candle to adult passion?

She thinks she is going to be sick.

Instead, she does what she does best. She plasters on a fake smile, hoping like hell Grace doesn't know it is fake (Tommy will, he knows every nuance about her), and tremulously says, "I'm just leaving. It's nice to meet you, Grace."

And she walks off down the darkened street, ignoring Tommy calling her name and ignoring the bitter chill of the wind. She walks confidently all the way down the street, her heels clapping against the floor rhythmically. She turns the corner, braces herself against the wall of the building and throws up all over the mud splattered concrete.

* * *

**Thank you for your lovely comments! Updates may be coming a little more sporadically as of now due to work commitments and studying (damn that postgrad work). **

**Hope you enjoyed the chapter!**


	11. Part Two: 6

Daisy has worked hard enough and long enough in this industry to be able to pick and choose her customers. She has never really been that selective, but she is grateful for it after visiting Tommy that day. She has enough money to live comfortably without sleeping around again. This is brilliant in the few weeks after seeing him, because she doesn't think she'd be able to be in the presence of any man wanting sex ever again after being in the same room as Tommy Shelby. How, after all these years, can he set her alight, both mentally and physically? She doesn't argue, really, in her day to day life, but she argued with him. She doesn't cry, but she did. She doesn't shout, but she did. He brings out the best and worst in her all at the same time.

She doesn't know what to do with herself.

She sits in her apartment, making scarves and dresses, reading books that make her happy and trying to lift her spirits after what she'd seen a fortnight ago. The beautiful Grace being alone with her Tommy, loving her Tommy.

He'd always been hers and she'd always been his. And she always would be, even if he decided that Grace was who he wanted and loved now. She would accept this, because she owed it to him. She wouldn't protest if he chose Grace, the beautiful blonde, but she'd simply let him know how much she had loved him - does love him, still inexplicably adores him - and would move on. Perhaps set up a place where prostitutes could go for high quality accommodation and management; if there was one thing she knew, it was the whore industry. She knew how cruel men could be, how violent some of these girls' _madames_ were. She could help them. Provide a safe place for them. Let them know someone cared.

She thinks she might do that anyway.

She won't go home to Birmingham. She can't. Not after what has happened. Why did Polly tell Tommy that she'd left with a man because she couldn't bear to wait for him? Daisy knew, surely Ada knew, that she'd have waited for forever and a day for Tommy to return if she had any kind of reassurance that he would indeed return. _Any_ kind.

Polly had told her for sure he was dead. Missing in action when an attack had come. No survivors, she had said.

Why would Polly say that if Tommy had never even been missing? Why had she given Daisy no hope?

Daisy sighs into her hands. She's sat in her room all day sewing and now James Lewis, the man who is her friend as well as a patron, has persuaded her to come out. He's heard of this new club that has been doing well for itself and apparently she needs to spend some time there. She protests at first, but James is hard to say no to - this is why, of course, he is beyond wealthy.

The club is loud and full of life. Daisy feels like an imposter sitting on her chair, men crowding around her trying to make her smile, make her choose them. She is quiet and, if she is being honest, still sad. For the first time in years, she doesn't know what to do. For the first time in years, she is scared that she will be second best to another woman as per usual; she is used to being the one on the side - she is a whore, and these rich men who pay for her are usually always married. She is never the girl you marry. Except to Tommy of course; he had said he wanted to marry her. But that was before she started sleeping with people for money. Nobody in their right minds would have her now; she is damaged goods, she thinks. She is soiled. And dirty, so so dirty for what she's let happen to her over the years, for what she's willingly participated in.

These men crowding around her want her to choose one of them, maybe so they feel superior - they managed to be the one she singled out. Despite this, a man would never choose her. For herself. For the girl behind the facade. These men want Fleur, but nobody would ever want Daisy, and this is what makes her sad, for it is Daisy who wakes up every morning alone even if someone is next to her and it is Daisy whose head hits a pillow every night. It is Daisy who has these thoughts, these worries, these ideas… Fleur just fucks. She is like two different people, and neither of them are marriage material. She will always be alone.

As she sips on her champagne, _only the best for my little Fleur_, James had said, she tries to come to terms with this. Tries to smile at the men throwing compliments at her, tries to understand that she will always be alone. She snorts as she thinks, maybe Alfie will marry me when I turn thirty, just to make me feel better. They were friends; surely he would look after her once her looks and youth and allure had died out.

The place is loud when they all hear the sounds of glasses smashing and the tell-tale sounds of a fight breaking out. Her head whips around to the far corner of the room and sees familiar flat-top caps and distinctive haircuts.

Of all the clubs in all of London.

James starts trying to usher her out the back way of the room, the men she is with trying to get out of the line of fire rather than helping stop the fighting, but she manages to slip from James' grip and make her way to the glass panel that she leans on to see into the carnage of the dance floor. She needs to make sure he is okay…

A chair gets thrown by a manic Arthur at a man standing a few feet in front of the panel and, preempting the man's reactions, she quickly moves backwards so she doesn't get hit by the incoming chair. In the rush of adrenaline that hits her, she forgets that she is standing in front of a glass panel. She misses the chair, but the chair hits the glass…

It flies at her in a myriad of angles, and she quickly turns around and covers her head to reduce the impact.

She feels the shards cutting into the back of her legs, marking her skin in zigzagging patterns and completely dicing up her Parisian dress. Not that she cares. She falls to the ground along with the glass, her bleeding legs not being able to hold her weight any longer. She hisses through her teeth as tears of pain flood her eyes.

Blissfully, she loses consciousness, but not before hearing a frantic voice she knows all too well shouting her name.

* * *

**Sorry this is a bit short; work and my masters are catching up with me right now! Apologies!**


	12. Part Two: 7

**Sorry for the delay! Hope you enjoy this; we're getting into the main part of this story with this chapter.**

* * *

She awakens to people arguing and shouting around her. _About_ her, if her hearing is still excellent.

"Why is she here? Why didn't you take her home?"

"She needs someone to look after her," a low voice tells the Irish woman who is shouting.

"Take her to a hospital then!" The woman sounds exasperated, and angry and hurt. Who is she? Daisy wonders.

"I couldn't take her to a hospital, they've got people lookin' for us. She's staying here, Grace." His voice is final, and Grace - _ah, the beautiful blonde_ \- huffs indignantly and disbelievingly.

"If you think I'm gonna let you keep this whor—"

He cuts her off. "You don't _let_ me do anything, Grace, especially not after what you did to me."

That quietens her. "I'm willing to throw my old life away for you, Tommy. Are you willing to do the same for me?"

She's not sure if Grace means it as a rhetorical question, but Tommy doesn't answer regardless and Daisy soon hears a door slam.

She opens her eyes and, as though they know exactly where they want to look, she stares straight at him. He hasn't noticed that she's awake so she gets to see him just be himself for a few moments. He looks troubled; he is running his hand through his hair, smoothing it down, and rubbing his hands up and down his face as though to clear some of the worries he has.

She knows that she is one of them; she hates that.

She clears her throat gently, alerting him to her wakefulness. She feels like a voyeur, and she knows that he would dislike her seeing him as this disadvantage. He is not hers to look at anymore.

He looks at her sharply, as though he knows without asking that she heard the argument he was having with Grace. He pauses a moment, then says, "You feelin' all right?"

She nods, trying to sit up from the sofa she is laid on. The room is the same one she was in the other night with Tommy - she is in his living room, and the place only reminds her of what was said between them. How both of them are different people now, and how she'd wondered and hoped that these two people could one day love each other as they had once done.

As she sits up, she feels her leg twinge with pain and she grimaces. He obviously sees this because he walks over to the sofa where she is laying, nodding nonchalantly at her leg. "It'll take a few weeks until you're back to normal, the doctor says."

She nods again, not sure what she needs to say first. Thank you? What happened? Is there any kind of hope for us? Who is Grace to you?

She goes for the first two; she doesn't want to seem desperate. She is not the young girl who pined after Tommy Shelby any more… She is a woman now, she thinks, a woman who for all intents and purposes is still in love with (and if she's being honest with herself, she thinks forlornly, still pines for) even though he doesn't seem to even want to look at her.

He tells her that she collapsed after the fight in the club and he managed to get her out of there and to his room with a doctor arriving only moments after they did. She wants to ask why he helped her at all, but again, she keeps quiet. She is so out of her depth when it comes to him now. She doesn't know him. She doesn't know how to approach a man so full of character, full of strength, as he is. She is a young girl again, talking back to Ada's older brother for ruining their game of hide and seek, and she doesn't know how this boy will react. Except he is a man now - she is supposed to know men, but this one… he is the exception to every rule of hers.

"Thank you for helping me," she says quietly, not looking at him. She snorts in a bid to make the situation lighter and says, "I bet James all but ran out of the club at the first sign of trouble; he's too rich to be hurt in a bar fight."

He doesn't smile but he does twitch his lips up and exhales in a ghost of a laugh; it's more of an acknowledgement that she spoke but still, it is something. _He is giving me something_.

"I didn't know you were gonna be there. We didn't go lookin' for trouble," he tells her, as though it matters at all. He could have gone there with the sole intent of causing every shade of trouble imaginable and she'd have still wanted to run to him and hold him as she did then. He looked as out of place as she felt; a rare quality in Tommy Shelby.

She nods, saying, "I know. I should have left, I suppose. But I needed to see if you—"

She trails off, unsure about his reaction to her staying to make sure he was okay. As she has recently discovered, she's not sure if he's still hers to worry about. Finally, remembering their somewhat mature conversation they'd had about their relationship, she notches her chin higher and finishes her sentence strongly. "I needed to see if you were okay. In my mind, you've just risen from the dead and I'm not having you scare me again with anything even _close_ to that."

She's worried he'll react poorly to that but she thinks she hates it more when he doesn't have any reaction at all; why does he keep everything so bottled up all of the time? She needs to know his feelings, what he's thinking. She used to know but now she's not even sure she could guess. She poured her heart out to him the last time they spoke and now she needs to know his stance on it.

"Say something," she whispers in the end. "Anything. I need to know what you're thinking."

He clears his throat, bringing his fingers to his eyes and squeezing the bridge of his nose. It's a trait he didn't have when he was younger but she sees it fits him now - running an expanding empire must take its toll and she's sure she's not helping. If she was his and he was hers she'd try in any way she could to aid him, to relieve some of his stress, to help the scenario if she could.

"I'm a bit out of my depth 'ere, Daisy," he tells her slowly, seemingly far more stressed than she'd originally thought.

"What's happened?" It can't just be her, or Grace's ultimatum… his tense shoulders tell her something else is on his mind.

He sighs and almost smiles, like he's pleased that she can still read him so well. Or bemused. "Sabini's movin' against me; last night pissed him off. We're pissin' on his territory and he doesn't like it."

"He and Alfie have some kind of silent agreement not to overstep on each others boundaries," she says slowly, testing the waters to see if he minds her bringing up her knowledge of London's criminal underground. She doesn't think he likes being reminded of how she became so knowledgable.

He nods. "Well the Peaky Blinders are trying to get in, but it doesn't look like there's room for three big names."

"So you're trying to remove Sabini?"

He nods again, sitting down with his legs splayed and his elbows on his knees. He looks older than his actual age in this moment, she thinks… She wishes she could go sit on his knee and help him forget, just for a moment or two, the stresses of his life. She's always been good at that with him and she's sure time has only improved her skills. She wouldn't mention that part to him but she just wants to hold him again, and have him hold her. She's been held often in her line of work but nobody has ever made her feel the way he did: safe, secure, loved, cherished, respected and wanted all at once.

She knows nobody will ever make her feel that again. He is it for her and she knows then that she will fight for her right to hold him again. She will not let him walk off into the sunset with beautiful Grace; she will fight for him.

She wants to help him, in any way she can. And then she remembers what he originally wanted her for…

"I can help," she says quietly, not sure how he'll react. She doesn't want a repeat of last time and she doesn't want him to think she's doing this as a job for money - she's doing it for him and he needs to know this.

He cocks his head at her questioningly.

She swallows nervously. "You originally wanted someone to… get in on the inside and report information back. I could help, if it will make you worry less. If it'll help you. If it means you don't look like you're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders." She laughs a little here, but inside she wants to cry - she's offering herself up for something she knows she'll despise and she doesn't want it to be in vain. If it will help him… she knows she would do anything. She wants to be some kind of salvation to him - even if her part is just a small one.

He doesn't explode in a fit of anger and hurt and cruel remarks like last time and she takes this as a good sign. He seems to actually think about it, staring at her the whole time. She just sits and stares back, letting him process.

"You want to do this?" His deep voice is emotionless and monotone, but the click in his jaw says otherwise.

She shakes her head hesitantly. "Not for me… but if it would help you…"

"I wouldn't make you do something you didn't want to do, Daisy," he tells her shaking his head, as though clearing it of thought. He moves over to the window, looking out it pensively.

"I've not wanted to do any of this Tommy. It doesn't mean I won't. Tell me, honestly, as if I wasn't your's once, if I was just a business associate… would this help you?"

She knows the answer before he nods. It's what he wanted that day they met again - someone on the inside.

She smiles shakily at him, trying to muster up the courage both of them know she doesn't feel. "Then I'll do it. I'll help you."

She thinks for moment, her smile dropping, before she clenches her jaw slightly and turns her face away from him. "Please, don't even think about paying me. Don't insult me like that." Her words are quiet; she can't bear to think of her being hired to sleep with Sabini by Tommy of all people. She'll do this because she loves him and for no other reason.

"Dais…"

His voice is closer than it was before, and she knows he's right behind the sofa where she is still sitting. She can almost feel the heat of his body, feel his closeness, the electric feel of him so near her. She can smell him, all masculine and cigarettes and Tommy, and she closes her eyes as the waves of nostalgia hit her. He is all she has ever wanted.

And then he ruins her memories by saying,

"You don't have to sleep with him if you don't want to, Dais."

_Well, thanks_, she thinks forlornly. Why would she ever want to? Has he not heard what she's been saying? She's not wanted any of this, and she tells him so through clenched teeth.

He sighs, and for a second she feels a ghost of his hand on her hair. He always loved her hair.

"You offered, Dais, I didn't want you to think I was making you sleep with him."

She scoffs. "Noble. I'm not doing this for a job, Tommy. I'm doing this because I've loved you since I was nine." She turns her head sharply, knocking his hand away. His face shows no sign of the affection his body has, however unknowingly, shown. "I will do this because I still love you and even if you want Grace now, I will be whoever and whatever you need me to be for you. Take that how you want but let's not have any mixed signals. Now, can I have some peace and quiet so I can think about how the hell I'm going to manage to persuade Sabini to trust me enough to tell me secrets he wouldn't tell every whore he hires. Secrets pertaining to you. I can't do that with you here making me feel like a cheap, dirty whore. I'm sure you have better things to do than babysit me, so leave, please, just for a while."

He does, silently, but the slam of the door echoes throughout the room. She's not sure if she's made progress or not, but she feels as though she's just laid her heart out for inspection… and he found it wanting. But then she remembers his hand and her belly tightens with emotion: he needs time, she needs time, they need time. And she remembers her promise to fight for him. And she knows then that his hand on her hair told her all she needs to know: he is trying, too.

There was the tiniest glimmer of hope and she clings to it with everything she has.

There is hope, she says to herself over and over again as she lays back down.

There is hope.


	13. Part Two: 8

**Hi all! Sorry for the delay again; my thesis is my life right now. This hasn't been proof-read since I just wanted to get it out ASAP. Enjoy!**

* * *

It takes her a few weeks to heal, as Tommy had told her, and she spends this time thinking about how she's going to handle Sabini. He's used to everyone fawning over him, she decides, so she needs to become unattainable: a hard task for a paid whore.

When she's healed, albeit with a few tiny white scars all over the backs of her legs (she doesn't mind them - she already has a few scars from her time spent at the orphanage with Joe and a few more won't hurt) she meets with the Shelby brothers and Alfie to decide how this will work. Alfie trusts that she knows what she's doing but Tommy, and Arthur especially, need proof of her talents; after all, they are resting their entire London campaign on her ability to garner secrets from Sabini through sex. John just stares sullenly at her when she walks in and Arthur doesn't even look up from picking the dirt from underneath his nails. They hate her, she knows. But after finding out that Tommy's been alive this whole time and not one of the Shelby's deigned to inform her, she's pretty fucking mad at them too.

"Gentlemen," she says coldly, throwing a small smile in Tommy's direction to let him know that he's not included in her anger. In the few times they've seen each other since the glass incident, they've called a truce somewhat. They've let go of their anger at each other and are… friends? No, she thinks. They can never be friends. They've been through too much. They loved each other too much, too hard, too long.

She walks over to Alfie who is sat behind the desk, fingers steepled. He's not happy with this, she knows. He thinks it would be a good idea if her and the Shelby's weren't so involved. He doesn't like it when emotions are involved in business. She told him it isn't business because they weren't paying her, but he just laughed humourlessly and told her that everything in London was business. She drops a kiss on his cheek, smiling at him warmly before perching on the desk since the men of the room are occupying all the chairs. Nobody in here cares for her reputation and so nobody stands up. She would like to think Tommy would stand if he was seated, but he is pacing the length of the office slowly. He looks calculating and walks with a confidence she's not seen since… well, since him, all those years ago.

"So 'ow's this gonna go, then?" Arthur mumbles from the chair, still not looking at her. He manages to sound disbelieving and apathetic all at once.

She shrugs delicately. "There's a race next week; I'll attend and see what I can do."

John scoffs lightly. "That's it? We're having to cancel our plans about this whole thing so you can 'see what you can do'? We're gonna need more than that!"

Daisy rolls her eyes and fixes her steely gaze on John. I_'m pretty fucking mad at them too,_ she chants over and over in her head. She can't let them get to her - yes, she is partially at fault for this whole mess with Tommy. But so are they. So is Tommy. She has accepted her role in the fallout and she has apologised… she can't do any more than that. And they owe her an apology, too. These last few weeks have been helpful to her. She has spent them at home, by herself, recovering mentally and physically. Her legs were nothing in comparison to the ache in her heart and the constant feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach that everything would go horribly wrong with the Sabini idea, and Tommy would get hurt. She knows, therefore, that there is no room for error in this. There is only one outcome she will ever accept: the plan working. She wants Tommy to be happy, even if it is not with her, but moreover she wants herself to be happy. She wants to find the comfort in her life that she has only ever had for one year. One year in her life she was happy and safe. She knows, despite her questionable moral system, that she deserves more than that. She deserves to be happy just as much as Tommy does. She hopes and prays that she is happy with him and he with her, but she tells herself that if she does this right, if she helps him like this, she will have corrected any mistake she's made regarding him. When she told Alfie about this epiphany of hers the day before this meeting, she remembers his sad smile and his quiet question: "What's he doin', Flower, to make up for his mistakes? Hm? He didn't try after the war either, remember."

She hadn't known what to say to that. But all she knows is that they both deserve happiness. And she can only hope that they can work through their differences and find it together again.

"Trust that I know what I'm doing," she tells Arthur with a secretive smile, knowing that she is telling herself that too. If there is one thing she knows in this stage of her life, it's seducing men. She can do this. She _knows_ she can.

"I trust you know your way around a man's heart and his cock too," Arthur snarls, sniffing and rubbing his nose roughly as he glares at her.

She expects it when Alfie stands up, a gun appearing from nowhere and pointing at Arthur, Alfie quietly and calmly telling him, "Disrespect her again and I'll blow you to fuckin' pieces."

She expects Alfie's defence, even though she doesn't need any help.

But she doesn't expect Tommy's.

"Shut the fuck up, Arthur," he snarls quietly. _Why are the men in my life so calm?_ She remember's Joe's shouting and yelling and that had terrified her when she was younger… but Tommy's and Alfie's calm, steely voices scare her even more. Because she knows that they are not 'all bark, no bite'. Their bark is nothing, so one is always astounded when their bite is deathly. _They_ are deathly.

She places her hand gently on Alfie's arm and rolls her eyes at him. "Aren't you in a dramatic mood," she teases him cautiously and quietly, always a little worried for Alfie's mental state. The war destroyed many men physically, but it damaged them all mentally. So many of the men she has serviced wake up in the night screaming; she wonders if Tommy is scarred in such a way. She knows he is harder than before… colder. She wants to be the person who knows his private thoughts as she one had been. It had always felt special to be the one person who Tommy trusted with this knowledge. She had felt special at sixteen when she had watched him 'do business' with his brothers, watched the harsh line of his mouth and the tension in his body, then only a short while later being the one to put a smile on his face and have him relax entirely in her hold. He'd always felt safe with her too, she realises, just as she felt safe with him.

"You'll _have_ to trust me, boys, if this is ever going to work. The races, next week, will be the beginning. Just… relax, and let me do my job."

* * *

The races have never excited her much. She doesn't like the idea of leaving anything to luck or chance, so when Daisy walks into the arena, into the VIP box Tommy or Alfie had bought her, she just sits straight down and doesn't bet a single penny. Sabini is stood with his friends by the bar behind her, and she can hear the group laughing obnoxiously every so often. She doesn't turn around.

Oscar, a man she has been hired by before and not one she much likes (a selfish lover she can deal with - after all, her job isn't about bringing pleasure to herself - but a selfish man in every aspect, and one who bad-mouths his wife at every opportunity) approaches her and only then does she stand up and turn so that she has Sabini is her sights.

"Well if it isn't my little Fleur," Oscar grins salaciously, winding his hand around her waist and pulling her closer. It makes her skin crawl, but she still smiles idly and kisses his cheek in greeting.

"Good afternoon, Oscar," she replies, casting a quick glimpse at Sabini. He is approached, she sees, by a woman much like her in occupation but one lacking the reputation of 'upper class men only' - Roxie will take on whoever she fancies, even if that someone is a common worker (she had to applaud Roxie for her lack of judgement; it was nice in a way). Daisy witnesses him completely dismiss her with a look of disgust and it is then that she realises that this will be difficult. Much more so than she had expected.

Oscar is babbling away at her and she's not hearing a word he is saying. She needs to focus on the plan she has: make Sabini want her more than he's ever wanted anything in his life. And what do men want the most?

What they can't have.

Oscar, she knows, is a rich and affluent man in London, so despite his lacklustre character, she knows what she must do.

"… she's always nagging about that bloody house her friend Maria has, and—"

She places her hand on Oscar's shoulder, stepping closer to him. "I'd love a drink, darling, would you accompany me?"

He smiles, clearly thinking what they all think - he is the one who is better than the others. It is him that she wants to spend time with. She can't even judge them anymore because she knows what it's like to want to spend time with someone because they make you feel special. She _loved_ knowing that it had been her who captivated Tommy. Everybody wants to feel special… even those as cruel as Sabini.

At the bar, she makes sure that she stands right by Sabini but not close enough to raise any suspicion. She orders a Martini (it's gaining traction at the most popular drink in London right now - she idly remembers drinking cheap beer at The Garrison when she was younger and thinks how much she preferred it to this) and as she turns around to smile coyly at Oscar again, she 'accidentally' spills her drink down Sabini's posh jacket.

He jumps back slightly, astounded that anyone would dare be stupid enough to spill a drink on him, but she just puts her hand daintily to her mouth and gasps a little.

"Oh dear, I am sorry," she tells him, not sounding that sorry at all. Daisy grabs a few napkins from the bar and hands them to him to clean himself off. She barely glances at the thugs around him that are now glaring at her for daring to spoil his suit.

"Are you fackin' blind?" He asks her, again, not shouting. His accent is as harsh as the lines on his face, his moustache barely hiding the hard set of his mouth.

She feels Oscar pulling lightly on her hand and she feels that it's a little clammy. He is scared of Sabini she realises. A man who was born into wealth, from the true upper class of London, is scared of this thug. This crime boss. Then again, from the way he is looking at her now, she can understand. But Daisy Smith didn't grow up in upper-class London. She grew up around the Peaky Blinders.

So she laughs, a tinkling sound that makes one of the men he's with do a double take. "Oh darling, I said I'm sorry. Besides, I'm sure you can simply buy a new one." She smiles at him cheekily, acting aloof and girlish. She knows that's not what he wants. He's used to women being scared of him, of men being terrified. He's used to airheads and people who fawn over his power and money. She will not be that.

"Do you know how much this cost?" He gets very close to her, and she is somewhat impressed when Oscar's gentle pulling grows more insistent.

She hears his throat clear and then, "Sorry Mr. Sabini, she's er, kind of new around here."

That's not what she needs right now. She lets the smile fall slowly from her face and lets her eyes steel with the true strength she has gained over years in the slums of Birmingham and through four years of horribly bloody war. She turns her head slightly towards Oscar, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on Sabini. He is like a snake, she thinks - any sudden movements were a bad idea. "It seems I'm in need of another drink."

Unsurprisingly, Oscar is pleased to leave the group and turn to the bar once more. She barely spares him a second glance.

"I'm not new; it was simply an accident. If you can't afford to buy a new one, I'll be happy to—"

"It's not a case of not bein' able to fackin' afford it," he spits, rubbing his hand over the damp material looking repulsed.

Rolling her eyes, she grabs a new set of napkins and, before his thugs can stop her, she takes a step forward and begins rubbing down the jacket herself. She sighs as though it is a chore. "If you're that upset by it—"

"Who the fuck _are_ you?" he asks, looking incredulous and angry, still… but not bored. His body has tensed from either the contact from her or her closeness or simply from anger, but she sees the anger leave his eyes and sees the spark of interest in them. She wagers that it'll be the most exciting moment of his day, the most unpredictable. Sabini loves being unpredictable.

She smirks, throwing the damp cloth on the bar. "If you're that upset by a ruined jacket, I'm certainly not someone you can afford, darling."

And with that she turns away to grab Oscar and strides back onto the balcony, arm in arm with one of the richest men in the room.

She smiles coquettishly at Oscar, who looks relieved to be out of the bar area, and turns her eyes to the intense set of blue ones staring at her from the other side of the seating area. And with that brief moment of eye contact, she knows that he is the only one here who knows that her heart is beating a mile a minute in fear, and that the hard set of her jaw isn't from a sense of entitlement like many of the other working ladies like Roxie thought, but determination to make sure Darby Sabini remembers her. From the look of pity in his eyes, he saw right through every performance she's put on so far tonight and knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that she hates, _hates_, her job. He knows that she would rather be on his arm that Oscar's right now, and she knows that he knows she sometimes wants to just run away, far away, from this persona she's created for herself.

He nods once at her, one side of his mouth lifting in an apology.

She nods back.


	14. Part Two: 9

She finds it hard to concentrate after that. Daisy is aware of Tommy at all times, when she leans over to brush her breasts lightly against Oscar and whisper in his ear, she is tense because she knows he is watching. Every time she glances over at Sabini, and when he occasionally glances back with astute curiosity, she is aware of his eyes on her. Her smiles are absurdly forced, her posture so tense she's surprised Oscar hasn't picked up on it. She doesn't even pretend to watch the race.

During the races, it gets too much for her and she excuses herself with a stiff grin and a gentle hand on Oscar's face and heads for the bar.

"Another Martini, please," she sighs shakily. She is off her game… how can she expect to capture the attention of Sabini when she's so worried about what Tommy is thinking of her.

"You drink fancy drinks now, eh?" His voice is quiet, attempting to tease but his deep voice lacks the quality of warmth teasing requires. He used to tease her a lot, but evidently time has changed him. War has changed him. "I remember you used to drink whatever cheap beer I put in front of you."

She smiles to the bar in front of her, hiding her face. "I'd have drunk anything you put in front of me."

She hears his small exhalation of breath: a laugh. A Tommy-Shelby-laugh.

She thanks the bartender for her drink and stirs it gently with her finger as she smiles nostalgically. "Do you remember that time you got me so drunk I accidentally fell over onto Polly?"

He is close to her now, and she can almost feel his warmth against her back.

"You were a sight to see, Daisy Smith."

* * *

_I squealed loudly as I landed abruptly onto an astonished Polly, who only raised an unamused eyebrow at me and continued smoking._

_"Sorry Aunt Pol!" I shout obnoxiously, knowing that she hated me calling her Aunt Polly, as though I were family. She had accepted me into their group, but I knew that she didn't trust me at all. I was a guest, never family, to her. She made it clear, too. _

_"Let's get you home, Daisy Smith."_

_I looked up drunkenly, hiccoughing and smiling happily. "Tommy! I f-fell over!"_

_He smiled indulgently at me, wrapping his arm firmly around my waist and helping me up. "You're a mess." He didn't mean it, I knew. He'd just never seen me drunk before._

_"I don't wanna-" I hiccough again, "-go home." I gasped as though something exciting had occurred to me, when in reality… "Joe might really do me in this time if he sees me like this."_

_I felt his body tense and his hand curl even tighter around my waist. "I didn't mean the orphanage Dais, I meant home with me."_

_I smiled and leaned wonkily into his ear and whispered, "So you can have your wicked way with me?"_

_He laughed freely at that, ducking his head down and nodding it a little. "Expect nothin' less."_

_I giggled loudly at his reply and leaned by head on his shoulder heavily. I sighed with a smile. "I love you Thomas Shelby."_

_As he always did whenever I told him that, he simply kissed the top of my head and tightened his grip on me. Even in my inebriated state, I found that I didn't mind that he didn't say it back. I knew he loved me; he'd just never loved anyone before. He didn't know what to make of the emotion._

_When he got me home and I collapsed onto his bed with a thud, I felt him taking my shoes off and start working on my mess of curls that had been pinned up. Eyes closed, I simply moaned a little as his fingers started working through my scalp, massaging the tender parts where the pins had been. He was thoughtful like this when he didn't think anyone would notice. He'd do it in public too, standing up so I could sit down, getting me my favourite drink without me asking, rubbing my feet when he knew I'd been on them all day… Just little things that we never spoke about, but things that made me fall in love with him all the more. _

_I rolled over sleepily, staring at him through half-closed drunken eyes. "You love me too, you know." _

_I saw his smile slightly as he sat down on the edge of the bed and took his shoes off too. "Is that so?" He said it distractedly, but I knew he cared. He cared about me and my feelings too much to be indifferent to this conversation. _

_"Mmm," I hummed as I started unbuttoning my shirt. His half-twisted head turned fully towards me and his eyes moved from my own to the expanses of skin that were being uncovered. As always, he watched me intently, and I loved every second of it, even in my half asleep state. "You looooooove me! Love love love me—" I cut off in a scream since he decided that was a good time to launch himself at me and start kissing his way around my neck and tickling my sides. That sobered me up pretty fast, but not nearly as much as him having his wicked way with me afterwards… just as he'd promised._

* * *

She turns and looks up at him with her heart beating just a little faster as that memory slides though her mind, and as she does, she noticed he is looking at her fondly, like he used to, as though he too is lost in the memory of that night. He is so close to her, too close for acquaintances, too close for even a couple in a public space such as this. Nobody should see them together, especially not Sabini… he couldn't know that they knew each other; she may be a whore but she didn't need to give Sabini any reason to distrust her.

They were both silent for a few moments, lost in their thoughts when he spoke quietly to her. "It's strange seeing you like this. You're so different…"

She swallows shakily. "It's an act."

He nods, and her posture relaxes a little. "I know, I can tell."

"Good," she responds with a nod, feeling shy and awkward and she's not sure why. "I wouldn't want you to feel like…what we had…" She's not sure how to go on, not sure why she brought it up at all.

"I'm sorry about what I said that day, Daisy," he tells her softly, barely moving his lips. She feels like they're in their own little bubble and nothing and nobody can reach them.

"It's okay."

He simply stands right in front of me, staring deep into my eyes as though they'll give him answers that I would tell him willingly if he only asked me them. The longer he looks, the softer his face becomes, the hard lines vanishing and the coldness in his mesmerising eyes thawing out. He is looking at me like I am his lover again, like I was the only person in the world that he laughed so freely with, that he held with such tenderness and treated me like a treasure rather than the poor, dirty, uneducated little girl that everyone else saw me as.

She swallows thickly, feeling her heart melt slightly. He can't go from calling her a whore to this. Though, they have both had weeks to come to terms with being in each other's lives again. She has made the decision to fight for him, and with the way he is looking at her, she can't help but wonder if he has accepted her into his life too. "Don't look at me like that."

Another man might've teased, "Like what?" but Tommy Shelby isn't another man. He doesn't say anything, just continues to look at her like he used to. She wants to lean into him, to lay a hand on him, touch him in any way she can, she wants to kiss him senseless and laugh with him again. But war changed them, and they both made mistakes that have led them to this moment and they can't go back.

But maybe, just maybe, they'll move forwards.

But not here where anybody can see them.

"Will you—" She starts, but her nerve gives out halfway. She wants to see him later, wants him to come to her apartment and continue looking at her like he is right now some more. "Come and see me later." She turns it from a question into a statement, trying to seem braver than she feels. "We need to continue our discussion from before." _Before Grace interrupted us_, she doesn't add. She doesn't want to think about Grace right now. She doesn't want to think about other girls he's been with, he's loved. She could handle sex, after all who is _she_ to talk, but the idea of him loving another woman… that hurts.

* * *

_Laying on his chest, our sticky skin touching, I couldn't help but mutter, "I love you Tommy Shelby," for the second time that day. Our sex had sobered me up and right then I just wanted to be with him like that forever: quiet, peaceful, playful, loving, caring. Happy. So so happy. _

_I heard him swallow, and felt his deep breath. We weren't teasing anymore, and I could tell he hated not saying it back. "Daisy—"_

_"I know you won't say it back," I told him quickly before he could ruin this moment. He _did_ love me and knowing that was enough. "Just… if you can't say it to me, you can't say it to any other girls, okay?"_

_I heard his smile and felt the relaxation in his body. Clearly grateful I hadn't pushed the subject, he wound one of his arms around me tighter and trailed his fingertips up and down my back gently with the other. "Who else is gonna love me, Daisy Smith?"_

_I pressed a kiss to his chest, squeezing his waist a little. "You underestimate yourself."_

_He laughed at that, the movement jostling me slightly and I smiled right along with him. "No one will love me like you do." He sounded almost proud of that fact, as though the love of a poor, stupid girl was something unique to treasure. "But I'll be sure to not say it to all my other girls too."_

_He so rarely joked that when he did it felt almost like a gift. God I loved him. _

_Putting on a pretence of shock, I slap his chest lightly and lightning fast, he flips us over and starts kissing his way down my neck, to my chest, saying my name over and over like a prayer._

* * *

He looks hesitant for a moment, stepping back a little as though her words bring him out of a stupor. He sighs a little, slicking his hair back in an almost nervous gesture. "If that's what you want, Daisy."

She nods twice, firmly and surely. "It is."

He nods in reply, straightening his jacket and taking yet another step back. The further back he gets from her, the more she remembers that she needs to be Fleur right now. She needs to get back to work.

So she clears her throat and puts on a flirtatious smile. "I'll see you later."

Right as she walks past him, she thinks he'll ignore her and let her go back to Oscar, but instead he grabs her wrist at the last minute and pulls her back to him so his mouth is right by her ear and nobody else can hear them. "When I saw you that day, I couldn't see a trace of _you_. The real you. But today-" He pauses, letting go of her and pulling out a cigarette. He doesn't finish his sentence, just inhales and exhales deeply. "I'll see you later, Daisy Smith."

Her knees wobble on the walk back to Oscar and she forgets to clock Sabini to see if he is looking at her again. Her heart is singing too wildly in her chest to notice anything. _Hope, hope,_ it beats, it cries.

If that is not progress, she does not know what is, and she cannot wait for this evening.

_Hope_.

* * *

**I can't thank you all enough for the lovely reviews you have been leaving. They truly make my day!**


	15. Part Two: 10

He doesn't show. She waits in her apartment all evening, first full of hope and happiness, then with irritation that he's making her wait, then worry: the Peaky Blinders were terribly notorious for getting into trouble, what if something had happened to him? She paces all evening until the room begins to get light once more, the sunlight creeping in solemnly through the cracks of the curtains.

She leaves the next morning to wander down to Aflie's, hoping he may have heard something. When she sees him, her old friend, she asks him immediately if anything had happened with the Peaky Blinders last night. He tells her no, and she's not sure whether to be relieved or angry or disheartened. If he was alright physically, why had he not been to visit her? He'd told her he would and she knows he rarely goes back on his word.

Her mind is working at a mile a minute. What if Grace showed up and he spent his evening with her, the other love in his life, instead of coming to see Daisy, the whore? What if he had simply decided he couldn't spend more time with her? What if he still hated her for moving on with her life after his 'death'?

_What if, what if, what if…_

She's become the wife, she realises with horror. Wondering where the man she loves has gone for the evening, whether it's with another woman. _Is this payback?,_ she wonders. Perhaps all the nights she took women's husbands away from them for an evening (or many evenings in some cases, or even some days) was coming around back on her and the one man she wants to settle down with, the one man she loves more than anything wants another woman. It would be ironic, she thinks. Cruel, but ironic. She wonders if she deserves such a fate. She hopes not.

Six days after she last saw him, Daisy receives a message in the form of a young, dirty-looking boy with a strong Cockney accent, telling her that Tommy and Arthur wish for her to be at a party this coming Saturday - Sabini would be there and that they were trusting her that she knew what she was doing.

"Thank you," she tells the young boy, giving him a few coins from the table by the door in thanks. He slumps away, pocketing the change and grinning a little.

He couldn't even come and see me himself, she thinks bitterly, more angry than anything else. Had they toed the line of their 'relationship' too much the day at the races a week ago? Had she rattled his perfect world? The world he's created without her, full of stone walls and cold glares and this never ending pondering she's noticed. Did the trip down memory lane force him to remember a time when he used to laugh and smile and love? Can he be that person again?

She feels like he really is treating her like a business associate rather than the woman he used to adore. Sending young boys to do his work.

_Fine_, she thinks resentfully. If he wants her to behave like a business associate at this party… that's exactly what she'll do.

* * *

The party is fancy, she notes as she walks into the ballroom slowly, taking in everyone and everything. The women wear jewels that she would've been astounded at when she was younger but now she barely notices them; they're just there to show everyone else how much money they have and Daisy doesn't care anymore. When she first arrived she would wonder and marvel at the women in their fancy dresses, with their hats and jewels… she found it hard to care then, too, since she was so depressed from the news of Tommy, but it still made her eyes bulge.

Now she sighs at the tediousness of this all. She thinks she's starting to outgrow parties; she knows she can't continue like this forever, especially now Tommy is in her life. She wants to have a home with him if he would ever contemplate letting her. If he chooses her.

She hopes, she prays, she wishes with everything she has that he does. But she knows she will not be broken if he does not. If he chooses Grace, or even neither of them, she knows he'll be alive. And happy. That's all she wants, even if it is not with her.

Still, it does not hurt to dream.

She clocks Sabini in the far corner, talking with other men at a table. He is naturally, at the head of it. Strange, she thinks, for a circular table. How can it have a head? And yet the men gravitate towards him, moving their chairs closer to him and leaning in, making him the centrepiece of it all.

She clocks him within the first ten seconds of walking in. But the funny thing is, he clocks her too.

He doesn't smile at her or wink like many of her other men would. He looks at her with a certain amount of curiosity, as though she is a racehorse he might bet on. She doesn't acknowledge him either, simply stares back. He doesn't intimidate her - she grew up around these people, lived with a gang, loved the most intimidating man she's ever met and had him love her. Sabini is nothing in comparison to Tommy, and his stares certainly aren't.

Some of the women in the room, gathered in their own circles, stare at her as she walks by them, turning to whisper and gossip as soon as they think she's beyond earshot.

"How dare she show her face!"

"Who does she think she is?"

"Whore!"

She hears them all. She understands their hatred, their obvious distaste for her profession. But she finds she doesn't mind or care in the slightest - these women have not known what it is to struggle, what it is to be truly cold and hungry, to be desperate enough to turn to whoring. She understands that she's renowned for stealing husbands away from them in the evenings, for occasionally making them fall in love with her rather than the women they should be loving. She doesn't try… but as she's going to prove to Tommy with Sabini, men love a challenge. Somehow, it's easy to make men fall in love when you don't care. Funny, she thinks, isn't it?

She heads to the bar to order a drink and is surprised when Tommy comes and sits next to her. She didn't think he'd be here, firstly because this was Sabini's territory and it's risky being in the same area let alone the same room, but also because he's not spoken to her since the races. He didn't come over. He didn't deliver the message himself. He's removed himself from her life almost as fast as he left it before.

She's mad at him. Truly mad.

No, she's fucking furious.

They'd reached a point of maybe not forgiving each others mistakes, but they'd certainly reached a point of forgetting them for the time being, hadn't they? They'd accepted they'd both made terrible mistakes, neither worse than the others. So why had he backed off? Who does _he_ think he is? Toying with her emotions was low… She loves him, but _Christ,_ she thinks, _I could kill him sometimes._

She doesn't even acknowledge him.

She hears him sigh and take a sip of the rum he's drinking. She can smell it from here and God, does it bring back memories.

"I didn't show."

She almost snorts at his obvious statement but she restrains herself… if she make any sound at him right now it'll be shouting, she thinks. She's brought back to the overwhelming fear that something had happened to him. After she thought he was dead… not letting her know he was alive for six days was simply cruel. And judging by the way he's struggling to know what to say, he knows it.

She won't accept anything less than an apology. And an apology is something Tommy Shelby rarely gives.

"Something happened… with Grace… I—"

_He didn't show because of Grace._

She turns her head to look at him, so sharply that he stops talking, her face probably conveying her anger and her sadness, before she walks off towards Sabini's table. She finishes her drink in a few gulps on the way there, all but throwing the glass at a waiter. If there's one thing she can't hear right now it's Grace's name. The woman who had called her a whore in Tommy's room that time. The woman who was also vying for Tommy's time and affection. Why did Daisy always end up competing against other women? She misses Ada. She misses having a female companion who wasn't also a prostitute. She wants a normal female friend, someone kind and funny with whom she can sit and talk and gossip and relax. But she is a pariah in this city, and so they all seem to despise her.

She keeps her eyes on Sabini the whole way over, and almost as though he can feel them, he looks up just before she arrives.

"Dance with me?" She looks straight at him, not wavering, not even smiling. She doesn't care that she's interrupted a conversation, perhaps a business one. She doesn't care that she's not exactly playing hard to get.

All she cares about is making Tommy see her with another man so perhaps he could feel even the tiniest bit of the hurt she's feeling knowing he was with Grace when he said he'd be with her. Was it her lot in life to always be second?

She knows it's childish and silly and even dangerous playing with fire like this. One doesn't simply use Darby Sabini for such immature whims and get away with it. Tommy is quite literally making her lose her mind.

He doesn't reply, but he does look surprised. This is good, she thinks in the back of her mind. He's intrigued. He stands slowly, not bothering to excuse himself from the table before walking around and heading towards the dance floor with her wrist in his grasp. It's not a tight grip, she notes, but it's firm and unbending. She realises she was half expecting him to decline her request.

He takes her in his arms and begins to lead them both through a slower dance, one too romantic and too pure for the people at this party. She still looks at him and he looks at her. She won't speak first.

Finally, thankfully, he cracks first.

"What are you doing, little girl?"

_What _am_ I doing?_

She smiles in what she hopes is a flirtatious way. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

He smiles back and it is in no way reassuring; he smiles like she imagines a tiger smiles after it has caught its prey. She swallows.

He doesn't reply for a few moments, before he spins her out and when he pulls her back in, he brings his lips right to hear ear, his harsh accent sending unpleasant shivers over her body. "I don't know what game you're playing, little girl, but I'll find out."

He makes to leave but she grabs his wrist this time and pulls him back. No one can play this game better than her, she tells herself. She can get any man to want her.

He looks at his wrist encircled in her dainty hand and he nearly smiles. _She has balls_.

"I don't know who you think I am, Mr Sabini, but I'm not playing any games. In my line of work, I can't afford to play games."

That's true at least, she thinks. Only this isn't work. This is her favour to Tommy, her way of easing his worry.

They continue to dance, the pace picking up but only slightly. "I've heard you can afford plenty with the amount of 'work' you do."

He's trying to embarrass her. Doesn't he know she's so far beyond that?

She laughs; it's a light, tinkling noise that makes the few couples around them turn their heads to see where it came from. They expect it least from the little redhead girl in Darby Sabini's arms, for who would ever laugh in his presence?

"I keep busy."

It's not the response he was after; he expected maybe a blush, tilting her head down, looking away, leaving… not laughter and an open admission to being a whore.

They stop dancing as he examines her face again and she continues to stare back with a smile on her lips, completely unaffected.

Once again he asks her, "Who the fuck are you?" only this time he asks her with a small grin on his face. It's equally malicious and mischievous and she's not sure she knows exactly what she's gotten herself into but she knows it's too late to back out now.

So she leans into his ear, having to rise onto her tiptoes slightly. She grasps his shoulder with one of her hands and uses the other to brashly graze her fingertips over his crotch. She feels a small wave of triumph when she hears his breath shudder. "The only game I'm playing is the one you want me to." She grazes a little harder, cringing internally that she's still doing this after all these years, demeaning herself like this to men she doesn't even like. "Good evening, Mr Sabini."

And with that she turns away, casting one glance over her shoulder to the bar where Tommy is still stood, only he is glaring at her.

Good, she thinks petulantly. If he wants to treat her like somebody he's forced to do business with, what is the harm in progressing this business quicker than she'd planned?

* * *

He catches up with her outside as she is walking down the street, her long dress held up with one of her hands slightly so it doesn't drag in the mud.

As soon as she hears the quick footsteps she knows it is him, so when someone grabs her elbow and pushes her around to face him, she's not alarmed or scared.

"What was that?" He says harshly, bringing his face down to her level and looking intently at her, as though she were a child again and he was mad at her for making Ada late for dinner. "Hm?"

"I'm not some _fucking_ business associate who you can send boys to deliver messages you should be delivering yourself," she spits, her silent treatment disappearing. She pushes him back slightly, not liking the closeness of him. It's clouding her mind and she can't afford to lose her senses around him anymore. "I know I'm a _whore_, Tommy, but I thought you of all people wouldn't treat me like one!"

He lets out an exhalation of breath: a sardonic laugh of sorts. "It's hard not to when you've got your hands all over Sabini on the dance floor." He says dance floor as though it is a disgusting place, somewhere nothing of this calibre should happen. As though he wouldn't have minded it in, say, the street.

"I'm doing my job, _Thomas_," she growls angrily, "you know, the one you asked me to do?"

"You fuckin' offered!"

It's her turn to let out a sarcastic laugh now, and she tilts her head to the sky in amazement. "So it would help _you_!"

"You embarrassin' me at a party isn't helping me, Dais."

He's turned to look away, scowling at the building over the road. Around them, drunken couples and groups of friends stumble over themselves to get to their next party. Nobody pays them any attention, thankfully.

"Is that what I am? An embarrassment?" She's angry and verging on hurt now. Fuck him.

His face twists. "No I didn't mean that and you know it."

She scoffs, turning away from him to walk down the street again. "I don't know anything with you anymore, Tommy."

Before she can leave, she hears a rough exclamation of "fuck" before she feels him grasp her hand, tug her back to him and then he slams his lips down onto hers angrily.

It is not tender, their kiss. It is not loving, gentle or magical.

It is harsh, biting, each of them taking their frustration and years-long anger and misery out on the other, on the one who caused it, on the only one who can heal it. It is familiar, she notes in the midst of her pain and pleasure - they know how the other one moves, where their mouths fit best, how to kiss the other until they're gasping and then pulling away before diving back in in desperation.

He groans the slightest amount into her mouth and she feels like she is home again.

At some point, their kiss stops being angry and harsh and slows down, their tongues becoming more languid as though they re-familiarise themselves with the other like old friends, old lovers. She reaches her hand up to lock onto his neck, loving the feel of the short cut of the back of his hair against her palm. She's missed this like she would miss air or water. She's been starved.

She doesn't know how long they stand like that in the street, reacquainting their desires but she does know that it's over all too soon.

He pulls away with another exclamation as though he can't believe he's just done that. Maybe he can't. She hates herself for doing it, but her mouth follows his as he moves back, seeking more. It takes her a second to realise he's not just getting air but is pulling away, the heat leaving his eyes and the tension creeping back into his posture.

"Don't," she whispers, not able to bear it if he regrets what just happened.

He runs his hand through his hair, messing up the top section which is longer than the rest. "Dais, that shouldn't—"

"Don't," she says again more firmly. "Don't ruin this."

He looks like he's about to argue before nodding.

"I do need to talk to you though, Daisy."

She doesn't like the tone of his voice - he sounds serious. She wishes it didn't have to be this complicated and they could laugh and joke like they used to.

No one will love me like you do.

"Okay," she says shakily, preparing herself for the worst. "Why don't we—"

"It's Grace—"

They speak at the same time and instantly her good mood evaporates. "Don't talk to me about her now, Tommy. Do _not_ ta—"

He speaks over her and it comes out in a rush as though if he says it fast she won't hear it. But she does. And she feels her heart come to a standstill.

"—She's pregnant."

* * *

**I have apologies to make: first, for the cliffhanger. Eek! Secondly, for the length of time it has taken me to update this. To cut a long story short, I've had to move home due to increasing anxiety and depression, and after dealing with my health comes my thesis (it's STILL not over!). So I cannot promise that updates will be regular; I'm very sorry, but life is... being life right now, as I'm sure you all understand. **

**Once again, I can't thank you enough for the lovely comments and favourites etc. It makes me so so happy to hear you like this! I'm sorry that at this time I an unable to reply to your comments (see above) but I really do appreciate them! (GetTraught, well done for guessing this plotline with Grace! I have plans for this! *insert malevolent smile here*) **

**Please excuse any mistakes; it's late here but I wanted to get this out ASAP.**

**As always, I hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for reading x**


	16. Part Two: 11

**Hi all! **

**Incase nobody had noticed, I'm altering the timelines here for a lot of season two's plot lines. I'm leaving May out of the equation (way too many eggs in one basket!) and pushing the pregnancy storyline further into the season rather that at the end. The Epson race where she tells him will be set towards the end of this story as I'm weaving Daisy and her influence with Sabini into it all, and for the sake of this story, then, I'm placing Grace's presence and revelation earlier on. I hope it all makes sense to you guys, still :)**

* * *

Numb. It's the only emotion that registers with Daisy - she feels numb. She feels like the world has disappeared and only those two words are left in it.

She's pregnant. If Tommy is torn up about it… it's his.

Her stomach knots up in a horrible, god-awful way, twisting and turning to the point where she feels like she may be sick. It's bottomed out, hollow but also full and she's worried she'll vomit all over Tommy and herself. She hopes she won't embarrass herself to that extent, not tonight, not now.

She stares somewhat blankly at him as she processes through this. Gone are the days of her bursting into tears and shouting at him - they're both beyond that now and they know it. They're different people, even to the ones they were at the start of the day. That kiss has just changed everything. She idly wonders that it may have been different if she'd heard about Grace's pregnancy at the start of the day, before they'd finally reconnected on this most basic level, the level that had always been underlying since she'd turned fifteen. There's no going back after that kiss… or so she'd thought.

She's pregnant. It's Tommy's.

_He will never pick you, Daisy Smith._ He is too honourable to discard the mother of his child.

She cattily thinks, 'well played' to Grace but chastises herself for thinking such a thing. She has always loved children, always projected her own lack of a childhood onto the idea of giving her own child the most happy and joyful upbringing, one where her child would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was loved. So loved. Whenever she had pictured it in the past, she had always, _always_, envisioned Tommy as the father of her child. She would want nobody else to be linked to her in that most precious way. She knows he'll make the most wonderful father. Growing up, in her teenage-little-girl fantasies, she'd always pictured the two of them in a small but cosy house in Small Heath - he'd obviously not want to leave there, seeing as he would be the head of the Peaky Blinders and the fact that he was so close to his family - that would be decorated however she would want. They would watch their children play along the street and she would glance down the long pathway to the orphanage at the end of the road and thank her lucky stars that she'd made it. That would be the moment she'd feel like she was no longer Daisy Smith: the mucky orphan. She would envision herself being a mother, spending her day making the house she owned with Tommy - her own home, a roof over her head where she'd always be safe and happy - beautiful and clean, a place where her children would want to be. She would never want her child to fear or hate returning to their own home, like she had been. Then again, the orphanage had never been her home. She supposes she's never had a home. Tommy's home was where she'd always felt safest, but then she supposes that it was because he and Ada were there rather than the actual house itself. He has always been her home. Even when she had thought him dead, their memories together were where she would go to escape her dismal reality. He had always been her safe haven.

That safety, that comfort, had just been broken.

He was not hers anymore. He had other people to love in his life, other people to make him happy.

She swallows thickly, her hand moving to her neck to circle it lightly, her breath coming in short pants. "Oh."

It's all she can say. The man she has been in love with her entire life will father a child of someone else, probably marry someone else.

It's that thought that makes her breath come even quicker, her chest feeling heavy and constricted. She sees Tommy's face twist in concern and he makes to move closer to her to help, but she throws her arm up wildly to stop him. She needs space, space to think. She loves him and she always will, but she doesn't want to be this close to him at this very moment.

"Oh," she says again in a daze, half devastated, half wondering how she would fit into all of this. Wondering if she will fit into it at all.

"Why did you kiss me?" She asks quietly, choked. It's cruel, she thinks. If he is to be the father to a child of another woman, why did he kiss her? He surely must know how cruel that was.

He moved toward her anyway, always thinking he knows best. She tries to move away again but he grasps her arm lightly, not letting her. "Don't pull away, Dais." He mutters this under his breath like he doesn't even know he's saying it.

"You're being cruel."

He uses his free hand to scrape down his face in a stressed nature. "I'm trying to be honest."

She knows this deep down but for the time being, all of her ridiculous fantasies she'd had as a teenager have just come crashing down for the second time in her life. She wants him to be happy, but she'd always decided to fight for him. It will be hard, to think, to fight for a man so explicitly linked to another woman.

She breathes in shakily and exhales deeply, using her breath in an attempt to calm herself. "I know."

"I'm just as confused as you are, right now." He's as quiet as always, as though even discussing his emotions makes him weak.

She nods again; he really must be confused by all of these new developments right at such an important time in his career.

"Are—" She swallows again, her mouth drying out. "Are you sure it's yours?"

It's his turn to sigh now. "I don't know. She says so. She's not been able to conceive with her husband."

"She's married?!"

She hates that this tidbit of knowledge sparks a flame in her chest, a positive one this time. If she's married, there's a chance it's his.

He nods, exhaling through his nose. "She swears it's mine though."

"Do you want it to be yours?" She whispers this, scared of the answer he may give.

He looks away, and it's this that unsettles her the most. He is always looking at her when they're together. He is always so focused on her. "I don't know."

The hopeful sparks dims. "Do you love her?"

It's a while before he answers, and it doesn't make her feel any better at all. "I did."

Her face contorts with sadness and pain, her lip starting to tremble. She bites down hard on it, attempting to straighten her face out. She loves him and she just wants him happy. She repeats this mantra over and over, even though it feels like she's just lost the love of her life all over again. "And now?"

"I don't know, Dais." He released her arm and uses both hands to steeple in front of his face in deep thought. The crinkle in his brow seems like it is permanently stuck there.

He is cruel.

"Where do I stand in all of this Tommy?" Her voice sounds much stronger than she'd thought she would be capable of.

"I don't fucking know, Daisy!" He shouts this into the dark street, the sounds reverberating in the air. Drunken crowds of people walk past them laughing and Daisy hates that she let herself ever believe they could be happy and together again. They would never, ever, be like they were. For the first time, she almost wishes she'd never fallen in love with him. He's brought her so much pain, so many tears. She wonders if this feeling she has, that she's been broken one too many times to ever be put back together again, is worth the one year of bliss she had with him.

Of course it is. She would pay any price for that one year of sheer joy and comfort she had with him in the smoky, dirty city. For alleyway kisses and slow walks to the orphanage. For rough sex after one of his fights, for the tender lovemaking on a lazy Sunday morning. No price would ever be too much for that year.

But this came close.

She fumbles around in her clutch bag for her pack of cigarettes, clumsily grabbing one from the pack and then struggling to light it. She sees Tommy go for the lighter in his pocket in a bid to help but she turns away and manages to do it herself. She smokes a few times angrily, shallow puffs and sharp exhales calming her down slightly.

"Don't you shout at me, Thomas. This mess isn't my doing."

For some reason, the corner of his mouth lifts in the semblance of a smile. Her expression must show her confusion and exasperation, because the other side of his mouth lifts too and his body relaxes, like he's released all the tension in his body. Her hands flap in an aggravated manner as he walks towards her and takes the cigarette from her, taking a slow drag from it.

"You always call me Thomas when you're angry."

She feels her own mouth going to smile along with him, and then she remembers why her stomach hurts. "Don't say things like that to me now. Not after… this. Don't make me remember what we had… no matter what happens, that's gone now."

His face softens almost to the point where he looks like he'll kiss her again. "But we could have something else."

Her eyes well from the overload of emotions. She doesn't know if she's angry, devastated, confused, lost or all of the above. She just knows she's overwhelmed.

And she knows that he's wrong. They can't have this tenuous, new future their kiss had created. Not anymore. "No…we can't."

"I just need some time to think, Daisy. Give me some time."

"Time to what? You love Grace, and you would never turn your back on your child. You've already made your choice, even if you haven't realised it yet."

"I'm not sure if I do." When she doesn't respond and her eyebrows flatten, he elaborates. "Love her. I'm not sure if I love her."

"But you'll still stay with her. A baby, Tommy. A child. _Your_ child. You wouldn't ever abandon them. Don't… Don't act like there's a choice in this."

He exhales shakily again, like he hates what she's saying. "I just need time to think. It might not even be my kid."

She smiles sadly. "You can't think your way out of this one, Tommy."

And with that, she backs away from him slowly, each step hurting her heart. She tries to raise her smile a little but finds her face frozen for fear she'll burst into tears. "I'll still work on Sabini for you. I'll tell Alfie of any information I can find."

At the mention of Sabini, his face tightens. "No, Dais, I don't want you near him anymore."

She almost rolls her eyes at him. "I told you before, I'm doing this because I love you. Because if I can help in any way to ease the million worries you have, I will. And now more than ever, you need London, Tommy. You need the income." Her heart breaks as she speaks again and the first tear finally falls. "You have a family to think of now."

He takes his own step backwards this time, as though the thought had only just occurred to him. "You were always my family. Give me time, Daisy. I'm not giving up on...whatever this is."

She pauses, and whispers words she'd never thought she would say. "Maybe it's time we both do."

He shakes his head like it's a ludicrous thought, throwing the cigarette to the floor. "Don't give up on us, Daisy." He turns away, his hands in his pockets. "Not when we've been through so much. Give me time to think. Trust me to fix this."

And he walks away from _her_ this time, purpose in his stride.

She wants so badly to believe him, to trust him to fix this, but she knows already that he is too honourable to ever turn his back on Grace. With no way of determining the true father, he'll never turn his back on a child that is potentially his. He would never let the mother of his child raise their child alone. He is far more honourable, far more good, than he believes himself to be. But she knows him. She knows him better than he does.

He can't fix this. And soon, he'll realise it.

She tells herself that he is alive, and Grace can make him happy. He is alive and that should be enough for her. But when she arrives back to her luxurious suite, it's cold and uninviting, the room too quiet and the air too empty. Growing up, she'd always wanted to live somewhere this luscious, somewhere this expensive.

But now, all she wants is a small and cosy house in Small Heath, smoke billowing through the air, drunks shouting down the street and the horrid noise of factories permeating the air. She wants their dirty city over this fancy one.

As she sits on her bed, her shoulders begin to shake, and tears fall silently onto her knees; she's lost her fantasy...again. And for some reason, it hurts more this time.

He'll be alive and happy, she tells herself. Alive and happy. Alive. _Alive_.

Just not with her. She falls asleep with tears staining her satin pillowcase, not knowing if the hole inside her will ever go away.

She doesn't think so.

Yes, he is alive.

But she's not sure when _she'll_ feel alive again.

* * *

**Angst, angst, angst. I feel like the Potter Puppet Pals.**

**So it's short and somewhat heartbreaking but don't worry - I've said it before and I'll say it again, I am a sucker for a happy ending! I will fix this, I promise! Sorry for the delay, once again. For anyone who cares, my thesis was _finally_ handed in today so I celebrated by writing this: words written for my own pleasure rather than writing about research.**

**I can't thank you all enough for your amazing, truly lovely comments for the last chapter. I am feeling much better now I've finally finished my Masters and have had some time at home. You were all so kind and understanding and I can't thank you enough. (And now I've posted such a depressing chapter, gosh I'm mean aren't I?)**

**I won't say "I hope you enjoyed it" because I don't think it's an enjoyable chapter, but it is necessary. This talk was never going to be pretty and it had to happen. Just trust me to fix this ;)**

**Thanks again for reading x**

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**FUN FACT: This story is partially inspired by the film _Dangerous Beauty_. It's one of my favourites and I would highly recommend it if any of you guys are searching for films to watch! **


	17. Part Two: 12

Tommy Shelby has always been a fixer. He grew up with a drunk liar for a father, one whose absence broke his family in two. He'd fixed that by letting his older brother Arthur become the head of the Peaky Blinders rather than demanding it went to him, as it should've - he was more intelligent, more cunning, more daring, more ambitious. But Arthur Junior needed something to make him feel like he was needed, like he was important, and so Tommy had fixed his older brother in the best way he knew how.

He'd fixed his sister's unwanted pregnancy when she was only sixteen by taking her far away to a doctor who he'd made sure would never speak a word of this incident to anyone. He'd kept this secret from the girl he'd loved because his sister had begged him to even though he'd hated every second of it. He'd fixed his sister's problem at the expense of lying to the girl he loved, but he didn't mind - Ada had been fixed.

He'd fixed this girl he'd loved more than his own life, purely by loving her. He'd made an unhappy and miserable girl smile and laugh and for some strange reason, him being with her made her happy. He'd fixed her, and in return this little red-headed, mucky, uneducated but brilliant girl had fixed him too.

For the first time in his life, Tommy Shelby isn't sure how to fix this.

It was hard falling in love for a second time. It wasn't as easy as the first time - he was more cautious, more angry, more disillusioned with the world and especially so with the idea of love. His heart had been broken by a girl and his body and soul had been broken by his country. In a lot of ways, Grace had fixed _him_. He'd not meant to fall in love with the quiet Irish woman with the voice of an angel, but slowly and almost unwittingly, he had done. Of course, when he had found out that she was lying to him the entire time, when he'd found out that she was working with a man he despised, she'd broken him again. It was a strange feeling for Tommy - a man who is never affected, never broken - to have his heart broken only by two unassuming girls. Almost embarrassing, he supposes, that a war couldn't make him feel empty but two girls could.

The re-emergence of Grace in his life had thrown him for a loop. Two women had reappeared in his life - the same two women who had loved him and left him - at around the same time and both appeared to want to be with him again. Both appeared to be sorry, to want to fix him again.

By that point, Tommy wasn't sure he was worth fixing. He'd done so much since Daisy had known him, done so many things that he knows Grace had never been aware of. He wasn't the man these two women had fallen in love with anymore. But then, they weren't the same girls either. They were not girls anymore.

Grace's appearance hadn't shocked him much. He was surprised, of course, and a little confused but overall, their reacquaintance had been…nice. Yes, she had broken his heart, had betrayed him in an awful way, but he understood her. She was following her principles and Tommy could never despise someone for standing for what they believed in. She told him that she loves him and he believes her. He believes that she does love him, but he's not sure that she's not just with him for the rush, for feeling wanted. He's sure that husband of hers doesn't make her heart beat wildly in her chest, and he's sure that she feels that she needs that flutter. Tommy's sure _he_ can give that to her. He's sure that being with him feels dangerous to Grace, that by loving him, she feels rebellious like her nature demands of her. He's always been happy to give that to her. A woman like Grace's love is never something to dismiss. Tommy's still surprised that someone like him can be loved, and not even just by one woman.

By two.

Daisy Smith is another matter entirely. She's never loved him because he's aloof. She's never loved him because he's powerful, or because he makes her feel alive in a world that sometimes feels like it's dying. Grace feels like that. Grace loves him, and she does, because he is familiar to her - she is used to violence, to power, to danger. He is everything she shouldn't want in a man but she does.

Daisy is so very very different. She loved him for him. For his quietness, for his contemplativeness, for his brains, for the security she needed so desperately at that time. She loved him for reasons he's never quite understood. She was always so innocent, so kind, so unaffected by the shit hand that life had dealt her. He'd never felt like he deserved her love, but he always knew he'd work tirelessly throughout his life to feel like he had earned it. He needed to keep her love, because having her love made him feel ten feet tall. Made him think that maybe there was more to life than fighting, than violence, than fixing his family. She made him believe that he could be truly happy. That there was more to his life than the Peaky Blinders. She made him feel special - him, Tommy Shelby: thug, criminal - had the love of a good woman. A woman who was kind and selfless and endearing and funny and smart in a way that she shouldn't have been for a woman so uneducated, so downtrodden by the world.

He'd felt betrayed in the worst way when he'd heard she'd started whoring herself out to men. She had shattered every illusion he'd had of her, every pedestal he'd placed her on. The war especially had made his memory of her skewed, he knew that. He knew that she wasn't infallible, that she had her own flaws. She was naive and silly at times, but he'd never minded. Her flaws had melted into virtues as he laid in the cold, muddy disgusting trenches in Verdun. She'd been an angel that had kept him alive. He knows now that it wasn't fair of him to place such impossible expectations upon her, but she'd always been the constant in his life since the day he'd met her playing with Ada in the park. The little girl so brave, so determined to play hide and seek with her friends. She'd always been so good. For him to return to England and hear that she'd become the thing he'd had to spend so many nights in her teenage years promising her that she would never become, so many nights he'd spent holding her as she'd worried out loud about her fear of becoming a whore… for her to have disregarded all of her morals, all of his reassurances… it hurt him. It angered him. It broke every single memory he had of them together. And he'd hated her for it. For years, he'd not remembered their relationship in any positive way. His broken heart had made him view their time together as her way of practicing, using him to figure out what men like him needed in a girl. He'd stopped viewing her as naive and started thinking of her as a con-woman, someone as cunning and steel-hearted as his own father. Just like Arthur Senior, she'd made him feel like he was loved for purely being him and then she'd abandoned him when he'd needed her most.

Her re-emergence into his life had hurt him more than the time she'd left him.

He can still recall her face, the shock, the confusion, the pure unadulterated bliss at seeing him… and he'd known straight away that something wasn't quite right about all of this. When he'd found out her side of the story, he'd been confused and angry. Like he'd never been angry before. He'd wanted to make her hurt the way she'd made him hurt so he threw some awful words at her that he'd known full well were out of order, that he knew would hurt her the most. And he'd felt like utter shit after. When her face had crumbled, when her eyes had flooded with tears - the same eyes that he'd spent so many years staring into, that he'd looked into as he'd spoken those three little words for the time time in his life - he knew that she was, at the core, the same Daisy he'd grown to love. She was still the girl who would apologise for the slightest mistake because life had taught her that if she didn't say sorry, she would be beaten. He'd known that she was still the same girl who could cry at the drop of a hat, tears that he used to make fun of even though he'd always secretly loved that she was so vulnerable, so affected. But he had also known something else - she wasn't that vulnerable girl anymore. Any woman who was friends with Alfie Solomons, who had managed to navigate the shark-infested waters that was mob-ridden London could not afford to be vulnerable or affected or dainty or unassuming. This was not little Daisy Smith, orphan girl whom he had fixed. This was a strong woman, Fleur, who could command the respect and desire of men twice her size, men who had grown up with the best teachers money could buy, men with more money than they knew what to do with. In some twisted way, he respected her as Fleur more than he'd ever done when she was the little girl he knew.

It had taken him some time to reconcile the two of them - Daisy and Fleur. He knew she wasn't the same girl he had known, that he had loved, but he also knew that that girl was buried somewhere inside her still. It was those small clues to her old self that had made him think _maybe I can love this woman more than I had loved this girl. Maybe this woman can fix me again, and maybe I can fix her too._

But those thoughts had been dashed and divided by those two words Grace had told him in his hotel room.

I'm pregnant.

He'd never thought of Grace saying those words. When they were together, they never spoke of a family, of normalcy. They'd never been the kind of couple to discuss such matters. Times were too hard, violence too rampant to consider raising a child. Whenever he'd thought of hearing those words, he'd imagined them coming from Daisy's lips. Smiling lips, excited, screamed out in happiness as she jumped up and down and ran towards him and thrown her arms and legs around him. He'd imagined himself catching her, smiling quietly into her shoulder and stroking her hair softly, his fingers getting caught in the tangle of curls. He'd imagined himself kissing her neck softly over and over as she cried tears of happiness - of course she would be crying, she always did when she was this happy - and imagined himself saying "a baby" through his own smile.

He realised now that it did her an injustice to think of her in such an idealised way. The girl he'd known would have that reaction, but the women he knew now… he wasn't sure what her reaction would be. But he knows that he wants to find out. He wants to know this new Daisy… he thinks, he knows, he can love her more than the little girl he used to love. He doesn't know her as well as he would like to… but he knows that he wants to, that he needs to give them a chance. He needs to give the one true, great love he's experienced in life another chance. They don't know each other anymore, but god he wants to. He wants to come home to her, to her bright eyes, to her soft hands tickling the back of his neck like she always did.

These dreams, all of them, all of these ideas, these memories, these ambitions - all gone in the space of three little syllables.

He loved Grace. Not as passionately, or as strongly or as idealistically or purely as he'd loved Daisy, but he had loved Grace. He doesn't want to leave her to do this alone; he knows he can't. But in a lot of ways, he wishes he could. He said it to her in a frenzied manner "go home to your husband Grace and lie, tell him it's his, lie to him Grace, go home," yet he knew he didn't mean it. If there was the slightest chance that it was his, he knows he can't leave her to do this alone. But he also knows he can't trust her fully. Not after what she did. At least Daisy had a reason for her betrayal - can he still call it a betrayal? - whereas Grace lied to him from the first. She went off and married some rich bloke who can't make her heart beat fast, and now she wants him to jump at the chance of a life with her.

He can't leave her, but he bloody well doesn't have to trust her.

He sits alone in a quiet bar, nursing his fifth glass of rum. It's been two days since he's seen Daisy and two more since he's seen Grace. He needs to fix this - he needs to find away to make the two women he has loved in his life happy. Both of them deserve it. For the first time, Tommy Shelby is at a loss; he doesn't know what he needs to do next, doesn't know what takes priority: the woman he's loved since he was fifteen, first in a sisterly way and then more, or the woman carrying what she says is his child.

_Why did you have to kiss her?_

He's not sure why he did it. He hated…no, he fucking _despised_ seeing Sabini all over her, and her all over him. He hated seeing her laugh in his arms - god he used to love it when she'd laugh with him, used to love feeling her body shake with giggles - and more than anything he'd hated that she'd made it so clear what kind of profession she'd been busying herself with since he'd seen her last, that final night in 1914. She had always been so worried about ending up in this 'business' and to see her in action, to that level, had made him so angry. Angry at her for letting herself succumb to such a fucked-up line of work, angry at himself for not being able to save her from this life, angry at the world for forcing him into a war that took him away from her. And then she'd been so angry at him in turn, the only person who ever truly spoke her mind around him, and she looked so beautiful and he hated seeing another man's hands on what was once his that he'd snapped - he'd kissed her, like she deserved to be kissed. Thoroughly.

And he'd known that he couldn't go another second not telling her everything. He couldn't, wouldn't, do that to her. She needed to know the whole story, but then he'd realised too late that he didn't want to let her go, yet he knew it was cruel, so cruel, to ask her to wait for him. They both knew he had to stick with Grace, had to support her, had to look after her and their child. Yet he was selfish - he wanted Daisy, too. He wanted her fire, he wanted her smile, her laughter, her awful jokes, the joy that always seemed to surround her. He wanted to protect her, to love her, to comfort her… but he couldn't leave Grace. Not when she carried his child. Not after everything they'd been through.

How could he ever fix this?

He orders another bottle of rum, since he's finished the one he bought previously. The bartender gives him a look of 'are you sure?' but eventually gives him the bottle filled with a dark amber liquid.

The second he hears heels clicking against the floorboards, he knows it's her.

"Grace," he acknowledges, throwing back another mouthful of alcohol.

She places her hand on his shoulder to help her balance as she sits on the chair next to his, and he tries not to cringe at the touch. Unexpected contact still gets him sometimes, after everything he's been through. Loud sounds he doesn't expect, a touch he doesn't see coming… it brings him back. To the trenches, to the feel of the tunnels surrounding him in such a claustrophobic way, crushing down around his head…

But he is not allowed to feel such worries. So many people depend on him and his strength, depend on his to be the one stable constant in their lives even when everything else is falling to shit. He is not allowed to feel scared or worried or nervous. He cannot flinch at a touch, or jump at a sound. The only times he's remembered being truly scared always involve Daisy: the time he'd had to leave her to go to the Front - her tears, her soft lip she was biting to hold herself together, her trembling body as he'd hugged her goodbye... yes, he'd been scared then, but not for himself. For her. The time in the club, the fancy fucking club he'd hated being in, when an entire glass panel had fallen on her... scared. Having to tell this woman whom he'd loved for a lifetime that another woman was expecting his child - that may have been the worst. Her _face_. God, her face. He had hated every second of that encounter and, at that moment, he wished like hell he'd never heard the name Grace. He should never have had to endure such an awful conversation - hadn't God punished him for his crimes enough? Hadn't his time at the Front served its purpose of redeeming the shit things he's done in life? Perhaps this was another punishment for his current crimes. For fixing races, for hurting men who only had the misfortune of 'backing the wrong horse'. For not contacting Daisy after the war. For letting himself fall in love again. Is this punishment? He thinks so.

"You've not been to see me." Her voice is soft, gentle, lilting. It's calming, but at the same time it aggravates him. He's not calm at the moment - he doesn't want to be calm. He's not got time to talk to her when he's _thinking_.

"I've been thinking."

He hears her sigh. "And? Do you still want me to go back to him?"

A part of him wants to say yes so badly. Wants to eliminate one of the million-and-fuckin'-one issues he has right now. But he can't. He knows he can't. Daisy knows he can't. And he'd bet money that Grace knows he can't.

So he takes a long swig from the bottle, standing up and throwing down some bills onto the counter. "No."

And then he walks out of the pub, feeling like any chance of a reconciliation with Daisy has just been thrown out of the window. He feels… numb. Probably like Daisy did two days ago. Her face freezing, her eyes widening, her mouth dropping open. She looked shell-shocked. He thinks maybe he is, too.

He walks straight out of the pub without looking back. If he did, however, he would see Grace Burgess smiling in satisfaction, breathing a sigh of relief and placing her hand on her stomach - a stomach that she knows full well is entirely empty.

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What's this? A speedy update? From _this_ author? No!

Hope you enjoyed this chapter from Tommy's perspectives. If you all like it, I'm happy to throw in some more - I'd always told myself I wouldn't put in Tommy's perspectives for this story but this just had to be written!

Thanks for reading, reviewing, following, favouriting etc. It makes my day getting those emails! x


	18. Part Two: 13

**_This isn't proofread in the slightest! My sincerest apologies for any errors!_**

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When Daisy hears the door go three days after seeing Tommy last, she knows it's him. And she knows what his decision is. She's known it from the second he told her - any other answer, any other decision would mean that Tommy isn't who she knows and loves. She loves that deep down he is honourable and good. She would find it hard to love him if he abandons his unborn child and the mother of his child.

She takes a deep breath before opening the door, straightens her dress and swings it open to reveal… Alfie.

She frowns, confused. "Alfie? Are… Is everything okay?"

He never comes round to her suite, never comes over and risks someone seeing his connection with her. Her stomach tightens as she thinks of possibilities - Tommy has been in a fight, one where he was too distracted by everything to get his full bearings and he's dead…

"Is everything okay?" She demands again, this time more frantic.

He nods, his eyebrows raising as he places his hands behind his back and rocks back on his heels. "It's fine. Can I come in?"

Releasing a relieved sigh, she attempts to put on a happy smile. Not that she's not happy to see him, of course she always is, he's such a dear friend to her, but she is finding it hard to be happy this week. It feels like for every advancement she makes in life, life always finds a way of knocking her back twenty paces. She's starting to become fed up of it. "Of course, come in."

She makes him a pot of tea, watching bemused as he walks around her living room looking at all of the fancy furniture.

"You really did make it, didn't you, Flower?"

Six months ago, she might've smiled and nodded her head and thanked him again for taking her under his wing. But now… now she smiles sadly and doesn't say anything. She thinks about Tommy and Grace and the family they're going to raise together. They might get married, Tommy looking dapper in a suit and the other Shelby's dressed up in their finest, Ada in some pretty pink dress, perhaps, and Polly in some fancy hat.

_ It doesn't feel like I've made it, Alfie._

"Darby Sabini has been asking around about you."

She nods as she sits down and pours their tea out. "Good."

"He came to _me_ to ask about you."

She nearly drops the tea. Nobody is supposed to know about their business relationship, except Tommy - he is the exception. It doesn't do to conducive business as a whore to be linked in a business level to a mob boss. "What? How?"

Alfie shrugs, like he doesn't really mind or care. "No idea, Flower. But he did."

Her mind moving a mile a minute, she asks, "What does this mean?"

Alfie leans forward, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. It reminds her that this is a man who, unlike every other man she's known, has not hurt her. He's only ever looked out for her and she wishes sometimes that she could've fallen in love with him instead of Tommy Shelby. Alfie would look after her, he would make sure she laughed every day and make sure she was safe. Where Tommy brings her pain, Alfie has always brought solace. But Alfie doesn't make her heart beat faster and her knees go weak and her breath to come shorter. He can make her laugh, yes, but she craves the days of Tommy making her laugh so hard her belly hurt, she craves a passion that would still the earth and ensure that any sadness she has ever felt vanishes in the other person's presence. Tommy gives that to her. He gives her love and peace and happiness, but above all he gives her passion. He's always made her want to better herself, and she hopes she used to do the same.

"He's interested in you. Enough to ask the right questions of the right people." He lets his hand drop, and he sighs, leaning back in his chair. "One of my men let it slip, apparently. I've dealt with it and Sabini's promised to stay quiet if…"

She raises her eyebrows. "If?"

Alfie strokes a hand around his mouth and looks away. "If I 'elp him get rid of the Peaky Blinders."

_Yet another thing I now need to concern myself with. _

"Alfie, you can't! Tommy came to you—he… he came to you first! He's my… I—"

He raises his hand to stop her jibberish. "I haven't said anything yet, I've told him I'll think about it."

Daisy stands up, her brain starting to hurt from all the things circling it. "There's nothing to think about, Alfie! My neck is on the line here with Sabini, if he finds out I'm only talking to him because Tommy asked me to… If he finds out you're in league with Tommy… Are—Are you still with Tommy?" She swallows shakily as the idea dawns on her. "You're going to tell him no, aren't you?"

"It isn't as simple as that, sweet pea."

She leans closer to him in worry, anger and confusion. "It bloody well is! I'm risking everything by playing Sabini and if you think you can outsmart Tommy _or_ Sabini, you're wrong. Just tell him no, we'll deal with the consequences! It's not the end of the world if people find out that we're working together."

He doesn't back away from her angry expression or move to stand up, even as she leans over him snapping her words off. "Nobody would hire you, Daisy."

"Well maybe that's for the best," she speaks the words quietly now, the realisation dawning on her. She _hopes_ that nobody will hire her again. She has enough money to live on for a while until she finds a new job, one that doesn't make her skin crawl. She got into this industry to make some money, to feel some company to ease Tommy's death… Tommy isn't dead anymore. She doesn't need the money anymore. She's doing this, she realises, solely because it is familiar. Because it was whoring that had saved her, even if it is a degrading and disgusting occupation. It stopped her from starving and it numbed her to the world that seemed to bleak and bare without Tommy.

She doesn't want to stay in London anymore, either. Tommy has chosen Grace, whether he knows it or not yet, and they'll move back to Birmingham to raise their family. She imagines that he'll visit London often, though, and she'd rather be anywhere but here when he did. She's glad he'll be happy, she's beyond glad that he's alive and well… but she's not sure she can see him in love with another woman, married to another woman, making a family with another woman.

He asks gruffly, "Is this because of Shelby? Is he making you quit?"

It's a logical assumption and she can't bring herself to lie. "In a way it's to do with him. But it's also to do with me. I can't… I can't do this for much longer… I can't keep sleeping with these men who look straight through me. I can't keep walking down the street to the whispers of their wives, of their neighbours. Of _my_ neighbours." Her temper and worry have deflated now, leaving her sitting on her chair again with her her elbows on her knees. "I don't think I want to do this anymore. I don't think I _can_ do this anymore."

Alfie is silent, his eyebrows drawn together as he listens to his old friend express sentiments he'd not known bothered her. She always seems so strong and unrelenting, and when he'd first met her, she never seemed the sort to care what others thought. Why should she care what her clients' wives say about her - it was never going to be positive, was it? She knew that, she knew going into this business that it would be hard work and that it is not an admired profession.

"So what do you want to do?" He asks this slowly, not sure where he stands on the situation. She brings in a huge portion of his revenue and often, he relies on her skills to gain him connections he needs, information he needs. She is his friend, yes, but Alfie is first and foremost a business man. As always, he is thinking six steps ahead of everyone else and he knows, without a doubt, that although he and his business ventures will be fine without Daisy's 'job', he'll take a hit. He'll have to adjust and reassess many of his expectations… and Alfie does _not_ want to do something to tedious. He will support his friend in any capacity, but from a business angle, Daisy has just created obstacles for him he didn't think he'd be hurdling over for years to come.

He watches cautiously as she shrugs helpless, as confused and lost in her own thoughts as she was when they first met. Her eyes even have the same glaze of despair as she used to have… he hates that a man as ruthless as Tommy Shelby can make a woman as selfless and as loving as Daisy miserable. He should be thankful, Alfie thinks, that a woman such as her is even giving him the time of day. He can respect Tommy as a rival and a business associate, but he respects Daisy far more. She has come from nothing, _nothing_, to being the most sought after woman in London. To being rich beyond belief. To becoming a smart, business-savvy woman, independent in her own right. The fact that Tommy seems to be toying with her makes him want to deal with that Northern bastard in the best way he knows how…

It is this thought that determines how he will handle Daisy's situation. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder, his hand so large in comparison to her dainty frame - _she needs to eat more_, he thinks - and he musters up a soft smile. "Take some time. Don't rush into anything. Come round and see me whenever you want, Dais. I'll hold Sabini off for the time being, don't you worry about it."

And when he sees her grateful, yet still saddened, smile, he knows he did the right thing. She already has one man in her life messing her around… she doesn't need another. _Fuck Tommy Shelby._

* * *

It's been six days since she saw Tommy and, as she sits alone in her bedroom, she realises that she has become the woman waiting for her man to give her the time of day. She is one of those women - she is a wife, but without the perks such a title may bring. She is waiting for Tommy, _again_, and she hates it. She's so tired of depending on men. First she depended on Joe and his ever-changing moods for her food, for a roof over her head… then it was Ada's brothers for protection, guidance and company, and then it was Tommy for her happiness. Once more, she is basing her future happiness on Tommy Shelby even when she knows he _won't choose her_. She hates this, she hates her life, she hates the men she associates with…

_What am I doing?_

* * *

It is two days after this realisation that Tommy finally makes an appearance. It takes him eight days to decide his future, to muster the courage to tell Daisy his decision.

She knows it's him the second she hears the most tentative knock she's ever had the misfortune of hearing. Her stomach plummets, and her throat catches. She doesn't know why she feels nervous… she knows his answer. He wouldn't be the man she loves if he abandoned the woman carrying his child.

But still, her stomach flutters and she feels more and more nauseous with every step she takes towards her door, her bare feet making so sound against the flooring.

She opens the door and...

His face nearly makes her start to cry again, but she manages to smile at him instead and croak, "it's okay, Tommy."

His face to anyone else would be blank, but she sees everything - she sees the way his jaw was locked tight, his eyes desolate and overwhelmingly apologetic even if his mouth is straight and his hands are clasped loosely in front of him. To anyone else he may seem indifferent, relaxed. But she knows… She knows he has come to tell her that their relationship, in any capacity, has just come to an end. Neither of them are naive enough to think that they could possibly ever be friends. They've never had that relationship, even when Daisy was too young to think of Tommy as anything but the elder brother of her best friend. Even when she started to look at him in a more grown-up manner and Tommy still viewed her as a young girl, they never managed to become firm friends… they were always destined for so much more.

"Daisy…"

She shakes her head and tries to relax her body. If he knew how much it hurt for him to choose someone else, however reluctantly or however long it took him to decide, he would feel guilt he has no business feeling, in her mind. He has a duty to Grace… he owes Daisy nothing. She doesn't want him dwelling on this… if he is happy, she is happy for him. She repeats this mantra as though it will make this goodbye easier.

"Of course you have to stay with Grace." She nods as she says this, trying to get him to relax. His posture seems loose but she sees the tension in his shoulders, the lock of his jaw, the air of helplessness around him. He doesn't take pleasure in saying goodbye. They have both forgiven each other for whatever lay in the past - it was forgotten the moment they kissed. If Grace wasn't in the picture…

She stops that train of thought straight away. It doesn't do to dwell on what may have been. It is not.

She must do as she always does - she must move forward.

He still hasn't spoken, just stands looking at her with this face that looks entirely devoid of emotion.

She clears her throat of the lump that feels like it'd been caught for over a week and averts her eyes. God, it hurts to even look at him. "Congratulations. I wish the two of you…three of you all the best."

Her voice breaks twice as she speaks but she still manages to say the words smiling. She is perfect at acting… perhaps she'll take up that trade instead; perhaps she'll take to the stage. God knows she needs a new profession, a new start to her miserable life. One year of happiness…surely, _surely_, she deserves more than that.

When he still doesn't say anything or make any move to come in, she smiles once more, barely looking him in the eyes and says, with as much bravery and sincerity as she can muster, "Goodbye Tommy," and starts closing the door. There is no need, she thinks, to make this harder on either of them. She said she would fight for Tommy, but she cannot fight this. She won't do it to herself or to Tommy.

His hand slamming against the closing door stops her, and suddenly his whole face comes alive with emotion. He almost falls towards her, and stops inches away from her face and quietly says, heartbreakingly, "I fuckin' hate this."

If the situation weren't so serious and so soul-destroying, she might laugh at the way he sounds like a petulant child. But it is serious and it is soul-destroying to her, and his words bring tears to her eyes. "I know."

She feels his hands, feather-light, come up to gently drag across her stomach and she hears him muttering, "her. _Her_," under his breath. She's not sure what he means but she doesn't want to dwell on it - she thinks it will break her even more.

Her breath shudders out and she looks to the ceiling to keep from throwing herself at him. He needs to stop touching her; he's making it more difficult than it already is.

"Do you remember that night, Dais?" His hands are still stroking her stomach, curving slightly around her waist every so often.

_He is being cruel. _

"What night?" She shouldn't have responded, she should be making him leave. Back to Grace. But she's always been weak around him, always responsive. Pushing him away is like rejecting oxygen.

"That night in August. Before I left. It was so warm…" He pauses, looks her up and down with the intense stare she is so used to. "You looked so fuckin' pretty, Daisy."

He is talking about the night he told her he loved her, she realises with a painful stab to the heart. Her birthday. The happiest day of her life.

"Stop, Tommy." Does he not realise he's being cruel? Insensitive?

"I used to hate it when you cried but that was the one night I didn't mind. You were so happy…"

She swallows, and when he steps impossibly closer to her, she tells herself to step back, to make him leave. But she can't. She is rooted to the spot where she is standing, being forced on a painful trip down memory lane that she can't stop listening to.

"I was always happy with you."

A sound leaves him, almost like a groan. "And now I keep breaking your heart."

She doesn't say anything because it's true - he does.

"But you broke mine too." She is about to step back to reprimand him for bringing up the past but he continues talking before she gets the chance. "I had plans for us, Dais. In France, it was you that kept me alive. I'd think about the kids we'd 'ave, the family we'd build. It was meant to be you."

"Tommy, stop it. Please just…stop." She is crying now, trying hard to keep sounds from emitting; she is shaking all over, trying to be strong enough to let him do what needs to be done.

"I can't."

And with that, he kisses her. It's not like before where it was filled with anger, jealousy and past resentment… this was filled with love. With heartbreak. With goodbye.

Daisy knows she should push him away. She knows it will make what needs to be done harder, almost impossible. But she realises that she can't stop either. If this is all they will have, if this is the last time she will see him…

She throws caution entirely to the wind.

Wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders, bringing him as close to her as possible, she whimpers, almost sobs. Being with him feels so natural to her, like nature meant for them to be together this way. His arms have coiled around her waist and he is lifting her slightly so they are on the same level - it means that she can reach more of his face, stroke his features, his hair…love him with her hands, since she can no longer do it with her heart.

She's not sure who leads who to the bed, not sure who starts undressing who first. She only knows that soon they are both naked on her silk sheets, not saying a word to each other. Neither of them knows what to say - how does one comfort the love of their lives as they leave them? The only conversation exchanged is through their hands; she strokes his skin with loving caresses, re-familiarising herself with the body she used to know like the back of her hand. She remembers each hard muscle that the years have only defined further, each freckle, each scar. He has gained considerably more since they last made love, and she takes her time in kissing each and every one. He takes his time learning her, also. He kisses every curve, every peak and valley of her body. It is not rushed in any capacity - it is simultaneously a reacquaintance and a goodbye, and this fact is not lost on either of them.

When he pushes into her, it feels like home to her. It is achingly familiar even after all these years and she remembers the first time they did this. He was so kind to her, so considerate, so attentive. The years have only made them move better, both more experienced, both more mature. They know what the other likes, what makes the other's breath hitch, what makes them groan in ecstasy. When she climaxes, he barely slows down. He simply kisses her harder, bruising her lips, and continues, pausing only to look down at her with such intensity it made her heart squeeze.

Before he reaches his own climax, sweat making them stick to the sheets and to each other, he whispers her name over and over in her ear. When he orgasms, she swears she hears the word love roll off his tongue, but she's glad she didn't hear anything of the sort for certain. She would never be able to let him go then.

As they lay there in the aftermath, him still inside her, the reality starts to sink in once more. This will never happen again… They will never get the chance to figure out who they were, these adults that had once been young and hopelessly in love. They will never get the chance to ask about the other's day, never be able to lay like this again, quiet and sated.

When she fidgets slightly as a way of bringing closer the excruciating end to their goodbye, he grips her tighter, his face buried in the hair by her neck. "Not yet." He kisses her neck, closed mouth and hard, and he squeezes her waist tighter. "Not yet."

Tears start forming in her eyes again, but this time she simply lets them fall as she strokes up and down his back. She thinks she will regret what they have done later, will regret making this impossibly harder that it was already… but she doesn't regret it yet.

When he finally rolls off of her, he immediately starts getting dressed slowly. She watches him and he watches her; he watches the tears roll off her chin, watches the way her hair falls over her shoulder, making the sterile-white bedding look brighter.

Before he walks out of the door, he turns back to look at her as though he'll speak… but eventually, he simply places his cap back on his head, shakes his head once, his eyes slightly red, and walks out.

Daisy Smith leaves Fleur behind the very next day. She is no longer Daisy Smith, the naive little girl from Small Heath. Nor is she Fleur, the finest whore in London.

She is simply Daisy, the woman strong enough to survive anything life has thrown at her. The woman strong enough to lose her soulmate twice. Strong enough to survive having no one, having nothing.

She is broken, yes…but she is also new. And despite everything, it is this thought and this thought alone that comforts her.

* * *

_This is the most depressing this story gets. We've made it over the hump... I promise, it's can only get better from here! _

_There will be a time jump in the next chapter, and I should let you know that we're somewhat drawing to a close... I would say maybe four or five chapters left?_

_As always, thank you for reading and thank you for your comments! I'm so glad you all liked Tommy's POV - hopefully that last tidbit in the previous gives you hope for where this story is heading... because this chapter was depressing to write, never mind read!_

_I promise it gets better next chapter. Promise. _

_Thanks again, you lovely lovely lot x_


	19. Part Two: 14

_*One month later.*_

* * *

Daisy is used to entitled men belittling her and her gender. She is used to men thinking prostitutes weren't humans, weren't people who needed looking after just like everybody else. She is used to dealing with pretentious and rotten men… and she's happy, or as happy as she can be with her heart being broken, that she can finally put these skills to use.

The house she buys in a quiet area of London, far away from anything related to the Peaky Blinders which unfortunately includes Alfie, is perfect. Or at least, it is perfect for her. And according to the sheer amount of women that had come through those doors looking for advice or refuge, it was perfect for them too.

Daisy doesn't like giving herself a label, but if she has to she's decided she is a sort of _nouveau madame_ \- a protector for girls who are in such situations she once was but not a Madam only interested in securing money. She's been through enough grievances herself to earn enough money to not have to ever worry about it again and she loves that she can put it to good use. That she can help women who have no other choice than to sell their bodies and women who simply want to. She feels like finally she has a purpose in life. She is not an orphan belonging to nobody and not a girl belonging to Tommy… she is her own person, devoted to helping strangers. She loves it. She is making a difference for the first time in her life.

The women love it too, from what she has seen. Some are withdrawn, simply come into the house, use a bed, eat some food and leave again without speaking to anyone beyond telling Daisy their names. But Daisy doesn't mind… this place is for all women seeking a place to go for whatever purpose. She is not sure how viable running this place is in the long-term but if the War taught her anything it is that the future is not certain. So she is not thinking about it.

The job of running the place is a distraction. She spends every waking moment running around helping people, buying in more beds, more clothes, more food for the girls and she likes it this way. When she does get a quiet moment to herself, her heart begins to hurt and her stomach aches in a way she knows has nothing to do with her health. She knows what this feeling is because she has felt it before - heartbreak. When she is sat on her bed at the end of a long day, exhausted, with the sounds of London leaking in through her window, she thinks of him. She thinks of the way he clung onto her that night - "_not yet_" - and how desperate his eyes had been. She tries to stop herself, to remind herself that she is whole without him regardless of what her heart says but she still aches. She still hurts. Which is why she attempts to stay busy all day every day. There were greater things in this world, more awful things going on in London, than her own heartbreak. She had the means to help some of these women's situations and so she would.

She remembers occasionally the 'good days' of when she was a child, the unassuming day she played with her friend Ada and she met the man who changed her life.

It's alway the unassuming days, isn't it?

It is such a day that everything changes again. She thinks that she is set in her ways now, set to live her life as a helper to young women in dire situations and she's contented with that. But it seems that once again, fate has other plans for her - it seems she is becoming a play-toy for the fates these days.

It's a quiet day in the house when he comes to her. She's sat at the table with Josie, a young blonde girl who was thrown onto the streets about her mother died, and they are both enjoying the quietness of the early morning grey-haze that seeps through the window. They can hear the girls upstairs giggling and even though neither Daisy or Josie are included, they share a smile between them as it is clear that neither of them have heard giggles for too long.

When the door opens and a bluster comes in, Daisy jumps up - another girl? Another disgruntled man who has lost business because of her?

It's a man, but not one who is in the business of whoring out girls.

A million different emotions swim through her head all at once, but the prevailing one is confusion. "Arthur?"

Arthur Shelby takes his hat off in a display of politeness she doesn't expect, smoothing his hand over his head as he glances quickly around the hallway.

He nods, his gesture saying polite but his eyes still hard and cold. "Daisy."

A cloud of worry overwhelms her as she thinks of the only reason Arthur Shelby would be here. She clings onto the doorframe as her equilibrium entirely leaves her. "Is he okay? What's happened?"

He grows briefly before realising what she's implying. "He's fine. I'm, er, I'm not 'ere for him. I'm 'ere for you."

"Are you alright, Miss Daisy?" It's Josie, her slim figure appearing next to Daisy in a display of concern and bravery - Arthur is an intimidating man.

Daisy plasters a smile on her face. "Yes, of course darling. Arthur is an old friend."

Josie nods and smiles slightly, before tottering off upstairs to join the other girls. Their morning of blissful quiet and calm has been broken.

The two of them are silent for a few moments, Arthur looking increasingly uncomfortable. "Why are you here, Arthur? What do you want?" She knows she sounds as exasperated as she feels. Tommy chose Grace and Daisy accepted that with what she thought was, well, _grace_. Why couldn't they leave her alone? She is trying to build a life without him in it, and now his brother is inside her safe haven.

She bloody well is exasperated.

"I need a favour."

She can't help but laugh. After everything he'd put her through when she'd first seen Tommy again, after letting her think the love of her life was dead, after all that… he thinks she owes him something?

"You must be joking," she gets out in pants through her bitter laughter.

He looks incessantly disgruntled. "It's not a joke. Although I should have said, _we_ need a favour."

Her laughter gradually dies out after that. She sighs, placing her hand to her head to quell the headache she's already getting. "What do you want?"

"Alfie's joined up with Sabini. A lot's changed since you left. We need you to help us…_distract_ someone so we can get a job done."

He's asking her to sleep with someone. He's actually _asking_ her to do it.

"Forget it," she sneers. "I don't owe you anything."

"You said you'd help us before and now you're quitting? Us Peaky Blinders don't deal with quitters." He's trying to sound threatening as though he thinks it will work on her.

"Perfect! Then you can leave, because that's exactly what I'm doing." She gestures sarcastically to the door behind him and turns around to walk away, her breath shuddering. He actually asked her to sleep with someone to help him, to help the Peaky Blinders. After everything… after having her heart broken so many times, Tommy's brother has asked her to do tear herself apart one more time.

"_He_ needs this, Daisy."

She stops slowly, not turning around yet lest he see that her angry facade is faltering. She's just tired, now. "Did he ask you to come here?" She doesn't expect her voice to sound so icy - it's never sounded like that before. She sounds sharp and hard, furious and agonised all at once.

It's Arthur's turn to scoff now. "As if he'd ever let you sleep with someone else for a job again. He might be with Grace now but…"

She turns around now. "But what?"

He looks down to his shoes as though he knows he's said something he shouldn't have. "But nothin'."

"If Tommy doesn't want me there, why are you here?"

'Tommy's not in charge of me and he doesn't see straight when it comes to you. He never has. I'm not stupid - I know he's the real leader behind all of this. But whether he admits it or not, we need this distraction from someone we can trust. From the best. So he needs you."

The words hurt to hear - he needs Grace, now. Not her. Arthur just needs what's between her legs.

"You've all taken enough from me." She starts to walk off again, her voice quieter now, less angered.

"You wouldn't actually have to fuck him. It's a Field Marshal. One of us will be there before anything actually happens between you two."

She frowns. She thought he was going to ask her to sleep with Sabini. "A Field Marshal?"

Arthur nods. "It's a distraction, so we can take over Sabini's role in the races. It's gonna be us on top, Dais. _Us_."

She swallows. She knows they don't exactly follow the laws but murdering someone purely as a distraction… and he's asking her to be a part of it? "I can't be a part of that, Arthur. I've done enough."

"I'll give you however much money you want for this place. Whatever you want. I'll throw money at this place until it fuckin' sparkles."

"I've got money."

"I could buy another place across London. Expand your, er, business. Think of all the other whores you can 'elp, Dais."

She hates it, hates it, but her heart starts beating faster at this. She has lots of money and she can keep this place going for a couple of years… but after that? She has no kind of true business knowledge. She only knows how to fuck someone senseless.

Arthur sees her hesitation and immediately leaps on it. "I'll make sure you get whatever you need, whatever you want. We'll run this city if this all goes to plan… I can make sure whatever you want you'll get. Just one hour of your time, Dais, at the show ground in two days. One hour."

_But you've already taken so many years of my life_, she thinks.

"One hour for a lifetime of helping these pathetic girls in 'ere."

_I am one of those pathetic girls, Arthur. I am as broken as they are._

She already knows what her answer will be.

She will do whatever she can for these girls. Arthur knows it. She knows it.

"Fine."

* * *

_**This chapter and the next were supposed to be one chapter. However, it kind of ran away with me so I've had to split them up so it wasn't a huge chapter with too many things going on. So I apologise for the shortness of this chapter after such a long wait, however the next one should be up soon as it is mostly written. **_

_**Hope you're all well! Thanks, as always, for reading x**_


	20. Part Two: 15

_Warning: this chapter contains trigger warnings for attempted rape and abuse. I do not take this topic lightly in the slightest and I am not using this is as simply a dramatic plot point. It has value to the storyline and the characters and is not there for dramatic effect. This topic is very close to me and I feel very strongly about it, and would never make light of it in any way. _

* * *

The crowds in the stands are going wild as the animals race through the track, their riders hitting them ferociously. She hates the sight of it, so she doesn't look. She stares straight ahead through the people, searching for the one she needs.

Field Marshall Russell.

He's older than her, balding with a moustache. Dressed in a soldiers garb, she feels the familiar twinge in her lower abdomen - she shouldn't be doing this.

_"It won't get to the point where he touches you, Dais," Arthur said. "I'll get there before that happens, I promise."_

She wants to believe him, especially since he added _"Cause if I don't and Tommy finds out he'll kill me. Fuck, he might kill me anyway."_

He'd told her that he had told Tommy he'd managed to hook Lizzie Poole, who was now Lizzie Stark, into doing this. Arthur's eyes had fallen straight to the ground as he'd told her this because he was right - if Tommy did find out, he wouldn't be happy she was a part of this again. They'd gone their separate ways and she had been entrusted to stay away. When she had asked why Arthur hadn't gone to Lizzie, he scoffed and said, _"I wouldn't trust Lizzie tying my shoes, let alone with a job this important." _

The cheer of the crowds as another horse flashes across the finish line in a warm up brings her from her thoughts. She simply needs to get this man away from the crowds, and then she can go back to her home and to the girls. Josie was making them a pie this evening… Daisy smiles unconsciously; Josie is fast becoming her favourite.

She starts over towards the man guffawing loudly with his friends and puffing incessantly on a cigarette.

She pretend gasps as she puts her hand on the shoulder of the man sat beside the Field Marshal. "Mr Adams, is that you? Gosh it's been years!"

She has no idea who the man she is addressing is, but it halts their conversation and brings everyone's eyes to her.

The man smiles uncomfortably at first, but as he turns and sees her, his face changes into an expression of lust. "I'm not an Adams, but I wish I was."

She smiles flirtatiously as she lets her eyes drift across the table before landing on the man she's after. She holds her eyes to his a moment longer than is entirely appropriate and then looks back to the other larger man. "Oh I'm so sorry, I thought I knew you."

It is then that Field Marshal Russell puts his hand on her hip and turns her around. "But I know you… You're that Fleur that everyone is always discussing. I've heard about you. Although I heard you retired."

She hadn't expected her reputation to precede her… she's not sure if it'll work in her favour or not. She quickly changes tactics. "Not when there are so many men here that could satisfy me. And men I can satisfy."

She walks off then, only pausing as she rounds the corner to glance back at Russell and cock her head ever so slightly. He understands immediately, and slowly puts his cigarette out.

She turns and continues down the hallway, knowing he will be right behind her.

She hates this, she hates this, she hates this. This isn't her anymore.

She feels his hand graze across her lower back and she picks up her pace. Let's get it over with.

He turns her before she's at the place Arthur told her to go to and slams her up against the wall, sealing his mouth over hers before she can object. She tries to go along with it, but all the while her instincts are screaming get out, get out.

And she realises she should never have come.

She pulls away from him, wiping her hand across her mouth to get rid of his taste. "Stop. I can't do this."

"That's not what I've heard," he sneers, placing his hand on her thigh and moving it up higher roughly. She slaps it away hastily but his hand tightens and she knows she'll have a bruise there tomorrow.

"I said stop." She starts pushing him away hard, but he only gets angrier.

"I've heard you're a little slut who loves anything and everything if the person can pay enough. Don't worry, you'll get what you deserve."

Her heart starts to race and she wishes with all of her heart and soul that Arthur hurries up.

"Stop!" She shouts, pushing him away with all her might and then, just like Tommy had showed her when they were younger, she punches him hard in the nose.

It makes a horrible noise and he recoils in pain, giving her a chance to get away. Whatever Arthur has planned it's not worth this. She is worth more than this.

She knows she is worth more than this.

Before she can dash around the corner, he grabs her harshly by the waist and yanks her back into their little alcove. "You fucking bitch," he snarls, slapping her across the face.

Her cheek throbs, and before she can orientate herself again, he spins her around and slams her up against the wall face first, her hands locked behind her in his grasp. Another bruise to add to the list.

"Who do you think you are?" He pants into her ear as he starts pulling her dress up. She starts screaming but he uses the hand pulling her dress up to slam over her mouth. The dress is already up by her waist - he needs no more than that.

She wriggles with everything she has, sobbing into his hand and trying in any way to bite it, to use her legs to knee him, to kick him, to do anything… but she can't.

He's reduced her to a young girl again, beaten and abused by old men. She's the little girl who could take a punch from a man twice her size and still meet Tommy the next day smiling. She's the young woman who laid down on a bed and let Alfie's friend fuck her harshly for money. She's small again, broken again.

She can feel him where Tommy had been just one month ago and she hates that that is her thought - he's going to finally erase Tommy and she despises that more than anything else.

Right before he enters her, she hears a loud shout and suddenly he is gone from behind her. As she collapses to the floor in a bundle of tears, she hears a gun go off and then someone come to grab her hat from her head and yank it off. The pins pull at her hair and if she wasn't feeling so numb it would hurt. All she sees through her blur of tears is Tommy's angry blue eyes and then even they are gone.

She sees him point gun that just shot Field Marshal Russell at his brother and she vaguely registers his raised voice.

Focus, Daisy.

"You fuckin' lied to me! Her?! You got her to do this?!"

She rarely hears Tommy shout. He's so collected. He's at his scariest when he's silent. But this… this is something else. He is furious.

"Tommy…" She says, standing up and straightening her clothes out.

He turns his head slightly to her, keeping his eyes on Arthur the whole time, even though the elder brother is stood with his hands in the air.

"Why is it okay for Lizzie to do this but not me?" Her voice is quiet and it is what brings him out of the red haze he seems to be lost in.

He drops the gun and turns to face her. "Lizzie isn't you."

She smiles ruefully, her cheek aching with the effort. "I'm exactly like Lizzie, Tommy."

She walks off back down the corridor she came from, not wanting to be a part of anything they were going to do. She wanted nothing else to do with the now dead man on the ground. He was dead and she had secured a future for the girls at her house. She'd pulled through for Arthur. For Tommy. For her girls.

"Dais, wait," she hears Tommy call but she can't stop. She can't see him, talk to him, not after that. She needs a shower. She can't see him when she is this vulnerable.

"Daisy, stop!" He makes the mistake of gently grabbing her wrist to stop her but it's tender from Russell's handling of her so she winces and brings her wrist in to cradle it.

It's that gesture that makes Tommy's eyes widen and his whole face shut down.

They stand staring at each other like so many times before them.

It seems they are out of things to say.

She's confused and scared and hurt and disappointed in all the Shelby's for using any innocent girl - if it hadn't been her, it would have been Lizzie or another girl in this position - in such a cruel way.

"I am worth more than that."

Her voice is steel, leaving no room for argument. Although it appears he wasn't going to anyway.

"I know. I would never, ever, have wanted you to do that."

"Just Lizzie."

"Better her than you."

Why doesn't he understand?

"I _am_ Lizzie, Tommy! I am her! I am every single whore out there whether you want to believe it or not."

"It shouldn't have gotten that far."

His hat is off and he's running a hand through his hair stressfully. His jaw is clenched so tight that she idly fears for his teeth.

"I know." And she does. She knows he would never have put her, or Lizzie, in that position if he hadn't thought he could get them out of it. Tommy Shelby has just realised he is not invincible. "But it did. And that's on you lot."

He huffs through his nose, his hand coming down to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe Arthur had you here. I can't believe what that motherfucker did."

He glances back as though he wants to go back and shoot him again.

"Daisy…" He takes a step towards her right as another voice calls his own name.

It's Grace.

She stands in the entryway to the room that has now emptied for the race, and she looks between the two of them confused. And then her face contorts into one of anger as she places a hand on her stomach in a gesture meant to show Daisy that nothing has changed. She means for it to say, he is still mine. He is not yours and he never will be now.

"What is she doing here, Tommy?"

When Tommy doesn't say anything and simply continues to stare at Daisy in concern, Daisy clears her throat and looks to Grace.

"I'm leaving now. I was just here for Arthur."

Grace sneers at her, a look of disgust on her face as she appraises Daisy's rumpled dress and messy hair. "After another Shelby, are you? From what I've heard, it's not out of character."

It's a comment borne out of jealousy, she knows, but it is still a blow to her emotions. She doesn't have the energy for this. Not after what has just happened.

So Daisy smiles sadly at Tommy before turning to leave.

"Daisy, wait," Tommy calls after her.

"Tommy!" Grace exclaims, angered that he would stop her.

She stops and turns to see Tommy completely ignoring Grace and instead walking slowly towards her, as though his feet are moving of their own accord.

She hears Grace huff in annoyance and storm out of the room, her hand still on her stomach.

"What are you doing, Tommy?" She asks him in a way that shows she doesn't just mean right now… she means everything. What are you doing ignoring Grace and coming to me? What are you doing killing a man and using prostitutes to get there, no matter the consequences? What are you _doing_?

He stops in his tracks and shakes his head slowly. "I don't know."

She wants to go to him, hold him, have him hold her and tell her it'll be okay. But she's moved beyond this now. She knows she doesn't need him anymore. She just wants him.

But she doesn't want this Tommy. The man who lets women be used so he can advance his career. The Tommy that lets his pregnant girlfriend be ignored. That isn't the man she loves.

"Then figure it out."

And the second woman in Tommy Shelby's life walks out of the room, leaving just him and the gun in his hand that is still warm to the touch.

* * *

_I finished this faster than expected, so here you go - two chapters in one day! Sorry for any errors and I hope it wasn't too hard hitting. _

_We're staying at Epsom the next chapter! Tommy has some thinking to do and some revelations will be... revealed. (I'm all worded out, can you tell?)_

_As always, hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for your lovely comments, I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you're enjoying this after all the drama and sadness I put you through, tehe_

_Peace and love xo_


	21. Part Two: 16

She doesn't get far before she has to stop to lean against a wall, surrounded by laughing, chatting people - men and women who go about their day as usual, even though the girl in the fancy dress has just been nearly raped and then forced to see the man she loves and the man she left again.

She is not okay. Her mind, heart and soul are a mess, and she's not sure how she can make it all right again.

She ducks into a marquee that's full of bustling bodies, chattering away about the races. She can't be surrounded by all these people, the people who don't know what she's been through, who have no care for her broken heart or broken body. Moving through the crowd with far less confidence than she thinks she's ever had, she pulls herself into a small wooden telephone booth, collapsing to the floor as soon as the door is shut and nobody can see her.

No one can witness her breakdown.

She cries for what seems like hours but is probably only a few minutes. It is an emotional release and when the sobs muffled by her tear-moistened hands die down, she feels lighter. She needs a shower, she decides, and some comfort from Josie and the other girls. She has had her fill of this kind of London life. She wants to settle, to have some level of consistency and happiness in her life.

She sighs shakily into her booth as she comes back into the reality of her world.

The room is quieter and she can hear the commentators shouting names and times and figures at the crowds - the race must've begun. The big races. There are only a few voices left surrounding her now, and she hopes nobody notices her feet poking out of the booth. She wants to hide for just a little longer.

One of these voices catches her attention as soon as she hears his name.

"Does he know you're lying? Hm? Does Tommy know?" The voice is a man's low tone, the lilting Irish accent more sinister than comforting.

The second voice replies, "He can't know." Grace. Daisy knows she shouldn't be listening in, but she can't help it. She can never help herself when it comes to him.

The man laughs heartily and mockingly. "He'll find out sooner or later."

"Why do you care anyway? You washed your hands of me."

"That'd be impossible," the man says to her softly, almost tenderly. Grace feels even more intrusive now, but she's lost in the conversation. It is a welcome distraction. She wants to know what they're discussing - Grace is lying to Tommy about something. _But what?_

"What're doing, Grace? In nine months time, he's going to find out you lied." The voice is still soft, and quieter - Daisy has to strain to hear it. Nine months - Grace is lying about her pregnancy?

When Grace speaks again, she hears the tremor in her voice as though the blonde is going to start crying. "I don't know. I'm hoping he'll go to bed with me and I'll actually get pregnant but…" She sniffs. "He won't. He won't come near me."

She isn't pregnant.

The news hits Daisy like a freight train and suddenly all the things she was worried about, sad about, scared about before don't matter. Because Tommy left her for this unborn child. He is counting on this child, he is excited for it.

And there is no child to speak of.

Daisy isn't sure what comes over her but she stands up quickly, and flies out of the booth heading straight towards the couple.

The man is older than she thought he'd be but still an imposing figure. Grace looks shocked to see Daisy and then panicked. Very, very panicked.

"You're lying to him?" Daisy voice is croaky from tears but firm - she cannot let this slide. This child is the reason he chose Grace over her. She cannot, will not. allow Grace to continue to lie to Tommy in this way. Does she not know the wreckage she has caused? The wreckage she will cause once Tommy finds out?

"Who the fuck are you?" The man says gruffly, bristling at this strange, presumably bedraggled, woman listening to their private conversation.

"She's Tommy's— She was—"

It seems Grace is as confused by Daisy and Tommy's relationship as she is.

"Do you know what you've done? What you'll do to him when he finds out?" Daisy starts quiet but her voice grows in strength as she goes on, the anger fuelling her. "How did you think this would end?!" She takes a step forward out of passion, out of frustration, out of sheer bemusement and Grace does something neither the man or her see coming.

She grabs the gun from the man's waistband and points it at Daisy.

She stops suddenly, her face going entirely blank. What is Grace doing?

The blonde woman looks manic, scared and panicked beyond belief… her hand is shaking, tears are running down her face and her eyes dart around looking for potential witnesses. There are none but the man watching her carefully with a frown - they have all done to watch the race.

"What are you doing, Gracie?" The man mutters quietly, carefully.

"She can't tell him. She's the reason he's not with me. The reason he can't look at me sometimes. She's just a whore, she wouldn't be missed." She spits the word vindictively, as though that is a worse thing to be than a potential murderer.

Daisy is cold. She can't think beyond anything but that gun and the crazed look on Grace's face. If she dies…

If she dies she will die with regrets. She will die without seeing Tommy again, before holding him again. She'll die and leave her girls alone in the world once more, without a home, without love and comfort. She'll die not ever seeing her hometown again. She'll die without making a difference, without feeling accomplished. She'll die unhappy.

This isn't what she'd envisioned. She wanted to be in bed, old, surrounded by her children, maybe a grandchild if she was lucky to live that long.

Evidently, if there was a God… He hated Daisy. He'd clearly decided that one year of happiness was all that she was entitled to. No more.

"If it wasn't for you…" Grace trails off, her hand over her empty stomach.

"Grace," a new voice calls, strained.

Tommy and Arthur walk into the tent slowly, neither of them taking their eyes off Grace and the incredibly unsteady gun in her hand. The man with her seems angry at Tommy too, as though he is the bad guy in this situation.

"Tommy," Grace sighs wearily, the gun dropping by an inch or two.

"What are you doing, Grace?" Tommy's voice is low, soft and like ice - it's his most dangerous voice and Daisy gets impossibly colder when she hears it.

"I—I—" Her eyes flash between Tommy, the man by her side and Daisy. "I'm not—Tommy I'm not—"

Grace sniffs, then seems to throw all caution to the wind. "Why don't you love me anymore? Is it because of this _whore_? Is it because I married someone else? Why? I'd do anything for you." Tommy is walking slowly towards her and Grace seems to have forgotten about the scared woman at the other end of the barrel.

Taking advantage, Daisy starts to move away from the spot she's in, towards where Arthur is stood, but the man by Grace cuts his eyes to her and he's so intimidating that Daisy stops her escape. If he spoke up and made Grace jump…

"There's no baby, Tommy. I lied. I'm sorry—" Grace lowers the gun as her emotion rises and it's all the opportunity Tommy needs to lunge towards her and snatch the gun from her. The man by Grace moves faster than Daisy had expected with his age and the leg that looks damaged, but he surprises her. He jumps for Tommy and Tommy jumps for Grace and for a split second they all become a blur of one being.

Daisy exhales shakily and dashes over to where Arthur stands, pulling his own gun out ready to jump in.

"Stay 'ere," he grinds out between clenched teeth, walking into the foray and trying to pull his brother out.

Daisy stands there motionless, the events of the day catching up with her. Her eyelids flutter, and her chest grows exceedingly heavy. She passes out, hitting the floor hard enough to distract the fight in the middle of the room.

Daisy is thankful for the ensuing darkness that surrounds her, thankful she can escape her reality.

It is not what she thought her life would be at all.

But then, when is it ever?

* * *

She wakes up slowly, stretching out each of her limbs before opening her eyes. She's in her room at the house - she can hear the girls giggling downstairs and hear the familiar creeks the house has. It's comforting.

She needs comforting.

"You're awake." The voice comes from her right, and she turns her head to see Tommy sitting by her bed with his fingers steepled in front of him as he leans forward. He has a bruise forming under his eye and a cut by his lip but he looks otherwise unharmed.

"What happened?"

"Grace's been arrested, despite Inspector Campbell's efforts. Although I expect her 'usband'll bail her out soon enough."

She nods as though that's all she wants to know. She has so many questions these days, so many things going through her mind at all times… no wonder her brain shut down.

"How are you feeling?" He asks her, his clear blue eyes furrowing in concern.

"Fine." It's a lie and they both know it. She feels anything but fine. Her mind and her body are simply exhausted and she doesn't know what she needs more - him near her or to be completely alone.

"You started the home you wanted."

His voice shines with pride and it warms her soul. She _did_ do it. It's one of two things she will never regret.

He is the first.

"Daisy…" he trails off, sighing and looking away. As she expects, his jaw is clenched firmly, and she sees his fingers twitching as though they longed to have a cigarette in them.

"I'm so sorry, Daisy." His voice is nearly a broken whisper, and it's a sound Daisy never expected to come out of Tommy Shelby's mouth. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know Arthur had spoken to you, let alone asked you to come to the races. I didn't know Grace was that desperate to get away from her life. I didn't mean for my work to make you come here to—" The sentence ends abruptly as though he's just remembered what Daisy did to help him. What almost happened.

"I'm going back to Birmingham next week."

She doesn't know what to say. He'll be gone for good, then, she expects. No chance of her seeing him around London anymore, no chance meeting. Her heart grows heavy and her stomach clenches uncomfortably. She will never be ready to say goodbye to him. It will never be easy for her.

Only…

"Come with me. Come back with me. Back _to_ me."

His voice is monotonous and devoid of emotion now but that's how she knows he's serious. He is looking straight into her eyes as though he expects her to start smiling and cheering.

She simply stares back.

Because whilst her heart is bursting with this potential opportunity, with this almost perfect outcome, this fairy-tale ending… she sees something in his eyes that she's never seen before.

Pity. Guilt.

And she knows she can't go with him. Not yet.

The answer shows on her face - they know each other too well for him to not notice it. "I'm not askin' cause I feel sorry for you. I— I fucking _love_ you Daisy."

Tears roll down her face and she has to look to the ceiling just to escape the prison his eyes chain her in. She can't say no to him when he's looking at her like this.

Quietly, he asks, "Don't you love me?"

A humourless laugh escapes her. "Of course I do." He is a silly man to think otherwise. Can he not tell that her heart has been his since she was nine years old?

His frown deepens. "Then why—"

"You chose _her_, Tommy. You _chose_ her. I can't just—I can't. Not this soon. Not after what happened."

"I didn't know…"

"I'm not blaming you," she hurries to add, her eyes darting back to him quickly. She wishes she hadn't - he looks terrible, not at all like the suave, cool, self-possessed man that is Tommy Shelby. He looks like a young boy again.

They are quiet for a moment as they work through their thoughts. Daisy is overwhelmed still - she doesn't know where to begin.

Tommy clears his throat. "I'm back in London in a month to check in. Can I see you then?"

She tries to summon a smile but she is _so tired_. "Of course you can. Of course you can."

He gets up to leave, straightening his jacket and his cap out in the process. The action is so…him that her lips quirk up slightly. He comes over to her and presses a gentle kiss at the corner of her mouth, one than lingers and makes her stomach clench and her toes curl.

It is a promise. That this is not the end. That he won't give up.

Through the tiredness, the hurt, the pain, the fear… Daisy Smith feels a familiar feeling, deep in her bones. It runs through her entire body, right down to her fingertips that are clenched in the bedding around her. It is an old friend she thought had left her the day Tommy chose Grace over her. She welcomes the feeling back with open arms, and she knows that something is coming that will change everything.

It is hope.

* * *

_Apologies for the delay/errors in this work - as always. I am like a broken record. I am hoping to get this story finishes over the Christmas period as I am lucky enough to have a few weeks off work! _

_In the meantime, thank you all so much for your reviews! And I hope you all have a truly wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate it!) xoxo_


	22. Part Two: 17

Darby Sabini is the last thing on Daisy's mind three weeks after Epsom, and yet when he sees her across the road whilst she is coming back from a lunch with Alfie he acts as though he should be at the forefront.

He doesn't smile as he greets her and nor does she, albeit for different reasons. He is aloof, as a rule, and powerful and she is the most vulnerable she's been in… well, since she thought Tommy had died. She isn't Fleur anymore and Daisy, the real Daisy - the orphan, the widowed woman, the makeshift-mother of prostitutes all across London - doesn't have any interest in talking to the man ever again. She was doing it purely for Tommy's benefit, for the Peaky Blinders' benefit, but Darby doesn't know this. The last time he saw her, she was grinding herself all over him like a… like a whore.

"Mr Sabini," she exclaims with no attempts to hide her exasperation. _She isn't Fleur anymore. _

"Fleur," he says, pulling her to him sharply and pressing his cool, hard lips against her cheek. "I'd heard you'd left London." _She isn't Fleur anymore._

How rumours fly, she thinks. It is for the best, though, that this is the rumour going around. Fleur has left London, left Daisy. She exists only as a reminder to Daisy of what prostitutes go through and what, and why, they need to feel comforted. She exists to fuel Daisy's ambition to help any woman who wants somewhere to sleep, someone to talk their problems through with - a safe place from any desperate man clinging to the hope that these women need his affections more than any other. Desperate men can be dangerous. But as Daisy had learnt, desperate women can be too.

"I'm still here," Daisy points out the obvious. She needs to leave this situation and quickly - she wants absolutely nothing to do with Sabini, not since Tommy and Arthur ended up taking all of his money at the races last week. Of course, Sabini is a rich man in his own right - nothing could make him poor. But the races were a blow and if Darby were to find out that Daisy was involved with the Peaky Blinders…

It would not bode well. And Daisy has had enough trauma in her month for anymore to ensue.

"You ran off quickly the last time we saw each other."

Yes, she remembers. Painfully.

"I heard you were at the races last week," he says, his tone stating it rather than questioning. He knows she was there and he wants her to know this.

She smiles swiftly. "Work. You know."

He smiles back. "Plenty of rich men to choose from." His accent seems harsh in comparison to Tommy's lilting one, the one that reminds her of home.

Her smile tightens imperceptibly. "Yes."

He stares at her with too much intensity; her discomfort only grows when he takes a slow and casual step forward. "I heard you were involved in a commotion with the Shelby's."

"I was nearby."

Her heart starts to beat faster in her chest. She can play this game of deadly flirtation forever, but this feels…off. He is looking at her as though he is surprised and somewhat of even more interest than before. She doesn't like it one bit.

"So you admit you know them?"

She shrugs, trying to remain calm even though everything in her is telling her to run. She notices that the men he is with start moving around her, and she struggles to maintain this facade.

"I—"

"Daisy!" A female voice calls out, excitedly. The voice sounds familiar, but for some reason, Daisy knows that when she turns around it will not be one of her girls running after her.

The woman with short dark hair and a pretty face smiles gleamingly at her. She is dressed well, even for the decent areas of London. Daisy's heart beats impossibly faster as she recognises this woman, this mirage from another life entirely.

"Ada?"

Ada Shelby giggles in a move that, once upon a time, would've been out of character. "Of course, silly! I was waitin' for you at the house but I heard you'd been kept busy with Alfie so I thought I'd meet you here instead!" She walks right up to the shaking girl she'd once called her best friend and starts primping her - fluffing her hair, touching her jacket. "You owe me a slice of cake, you promised me!"

Both women are painfully aware of what Ada is doing - diffusing this situation that Daisy has found herself in. Daisy isn't entirely sure what is going on, but has decided that between Darby Sabini and Ada Shelby, she'd much rather be with the girl she grew up with.

So Daisy smiles, and grabs Ada's hands in her own. "I'm sorry I'm late, you know how much Alfie likes to talk!"

Ada groans playfully, as though they have been friends all their lives, but Daisy can see in her eyes that she is hurt. She is angry. She is not the same girl Daisy left behind, just like Daisy is not the girl Ada remembers. They are both stronger, hardier, more heartbroken and world-wearied. "Oh god, do I!" With this, Ada starts pulling her away down the street and Darby's men glance at their boss uncertainly.

As Daisy looks over her shoulder to see his reaction, Ada simply pulls her along steadily. Darby looks irritated, but he lets the girls go with a nod. Daisy's heart starts to beat at a less painful level, and her stomach relaxes slightly.

As soon as the women round the corner of the street, out of Sabini's view, Ada releases Daisy as though she scolds her. Her words immediately dry up mid-sentence, and her expression sours to a level Tommy would be proud of.

They both keep walking for fear of Darby following them, but they drift apart slightly, the wind flowing between them creating the semblance of a barrier.

"What are you doing here Ada?" For some reason, she is not alarmed when this Shelby graces her city. When Arthur showed up, her stomach had plummeted and a feeling of dread had swooped in and stolen her breath. This time, she knows Ada is not here with bad news. So this begs the question: what _is_ she doing here?

Ada takes three deep, long breaths and then grabs Daisy's arm to pull her to a stop. "You need to come back to Birmingham. Back to him. He's a fuckin' mess and we all know it's because of you. So pack your bags and come with me back to him. You owe him that."

Daisy rips her arm from Ada's hand. "I owe Tommy nothing. Not anymore." She almost paid off any imaginary debt she was thought to owe the Shelby's with her life. She and Tommy are on equal ground for possibly the first time in their lives.

"I know now that you didn't leave us, Dais. It—it was Aunt Pol who said somethin' to make you go, we know. She told us. She lied to you, she lied to us… She never liked you, Dais, and we all knew it but we never thought she'd actually…" She trails off. "He's not talkin' to any of us now. He'll turn up for our meetings but… but he's not alright." She looks up into Daisy's eyes, facing the woman head on. "He's not been alright for years now."

Tears spring to Daisy's eyes as she thinks, _I've not been alright either. Not since 1914. Not since your Aunt ruined my life with a lie. _But she thinks she'd rather be lied to a million times than have Tommy dead in a field in France.

Ada sees her eyes glass over and her expression softens. "You've loved him forever, Dais. Why can't you go to him? Hm? Is it us? Has Aunt Pol's meddlin' ruined Small Health for you?" She swallows shakily as she wraps her arms around herself. "I know we're not friends anymore but I'd still look out for you. We all would - Arthur, John… I know I don't have the right to ask you anything but I love my brother almost as much as you do. So please… come back to him. Please. Fix him." Ada's eyes, so much like her brothers', search her face with a sympathetic edge, and she quietly continues, "And let him fix you."

* * *

When Tommy arrives in London the following week, Daisy's home for the strongest women in the city is the first place he goes. Before he knocks on the red door, he straightens his suit, takes a deep breath and tries to think of what he'll say.

There's nothing he can say to undo the meddling of his own flesh and blood. The woman who raised him ruined his life, ruined Daisy's life and he can't forgive Polly for that. He can barely forgive himself for believing her. Looking back, he knows he shouldn't have believed Daisy would leave him. Tommy didn't know much about the world, and especially nothing about love or relationships, but he knew that Daisy loved him as though he'd handed her the sun _and_ the stars. And he knew he loved her even more than that.

He hates himself.

Everything bad that has happened to that girl has happened because of him. She'd been beaten as a child and as a teenager because he'd not been strong enough then to stop it. She'd been alone for years in the Great War because he'd left her with his fucking Aunt. She'd turned to prostitution to scrape by…because of his own self-doubt. She'd been hurt time and time again: their first reunion, Grace's pregnancy, Epsom…

He didn't deserve her. He doesn't deserve her. He knows it. He doesn't deserve such kindness and peace in his life, not after what he's done.

But he sure as fuck is going to fight for her anyway.

* * *

Daisy opens her door nervously, as though her body intuitively knows who is on the other side. Tommy's face looks as unsure as she's been feeling since Ada left with a final plea to come back to Birmingham. Back to her home.

She wants to be with Tommy. She knows this like she knows her own name. She loves him and she wants to be with him if he wants the same… But she also knows that his business is in Birmingham. And her business is in London. She cannot leave these girls yet… They have all grown so much since coming through the same door she now opens, but they are not ready to run the place alone. They need her experience, need her patience and her guidance…and her money.

And yet, her heart still sings when she sees Tommy Shelby's face, his bright blue eyes, his strong jawline, his confident stature.

God, she _loves_ him.

"Hello Daisy," he says quietly, unsure.

She breathes, "Tommy" like an adulation - not on purpose, but as though she can't control herself when he is near. He gives her a small smile as though he knows exactly what she is experiencing.

Their eyes roam over each other hurriedly, soaking in the other as though they are starved. She feels nine years old again, excited and nervous and…strong.

And just like that, she knows exactly whats she is going to do.

* * *

**I really am sorry for the delay but I hope you enjoyed this installation regardless. This chapter was planned to be the last with an epilogue to follow, but I want one more chapter out of this story - I have loved writing it (and hopefully you've all enjoyed reading it!). **

**Thank you again for sticking by this story, despite my terrible consistency in updating.**

**See you next chapter for one last time :'( xo**


	23. Part Two: 18

Small Heath is exactly as it was and yet so different. Smoke still fills the air, she still hears the workers trading jibes with each other, and The Garrison is still the hive of activity it always was. The only thing that is different, Daisy thinks, is her - she is not the little girl who left this place, even though her racing heart and sweaty palms say otherwise.

Thankfully, her hand - in all it's clammy glory - is grasped tightly in the palm of another hand, a stronger hand. The hand of the man she loves.

"Come on, Dais," Tommy mutters as he ushers her carefully along the road that was once as familiar to her as the back of her hand. The road he used to walk her down to get her home. The same one they'd first kissed on, first laughed on… It's the same, but the two of them are not.

They're better than they were.

Maybe not as naive, or as steady as they were… Daisy still isn't entirely sure Tommy isn't with her out of a misplaced sense of guilt and Tommy isn't sure he can create a life with Daisy after so much time apart. But what they do know is that a love like their's doesn't come around often. They won't waste it again.

_No one will love me like you_, he'd said once. For them both, it still rang true.

This is an experiment, she'd phrased it when he came to see her in London. To see if they could be together in Birmingham as they were once, to see if they could still be together. She'd not wanted to leave the home she'd built for herself and her girls' so they'd compromised: a month in Birmingham and then a month in London. Tommy always had business there, liaising with Alfie, so it was no trouble for him, and she'd relished in the idea of helping the girls in need up North as well as in London. People were always in need. She'd even suggested shyly to Tommy on the way up here that she might open up an orphanage, so that children - like her- could stay in a safe and loving home. Tommy had smiled so softly, so tenderly at her then that she'd kissed him chastely but passionately hard on the mouth. Neither of them had expected it, but he squeezed her hand harder afterwards as though it would pain him to let her go.

The few days they'd spent in London together had been slightly strained. They were still getting to know each other, still strangers in some ways, but deep down it was like their souls recognised that their other half was with them again… and it was the most relaxed Daisy had felt in years. They'd stayed in and talked, gone out and laughed, and it was like it was just the two of them in this wretched world and nobody else. Reality had hit eventually, of course, and they'd had the serious conversation that'd been brewing since Tommy knocked on Daisy's door. It had ended in the compromise of a month in Birmingham and a month in London, sharing each of their lives with the other until, hopefully, their lives became one instead of separate entities. It was the dream, Daisy thought, to have a life plan. And somehow, she'd forged one for herself.

The only true problems they have to face in the coming days are Polly and Ada. Ada is the easiest of the two, but her and Daisy's relationship is strange to say the least. The two used to be like sisters but after no contact for so many years… they, too, are strangers. Daisy hopes they can become friends again, maybe not like before, but Ada is not her main concern in the Shelby family. Not Arthur, who came to London with Tommy and came back with them, practically jovial with their reunion, not Finn, not Michael… Polly.

Daisy knows Polly is family and family is everything to Tommy. More than loyalty, more than honour, more than anything - family.

_You were always my family, Dais. _

She is hoping that one day Tommy will think of her as family once more, but for now Polly is his family. And Polly hates Daisy's guts, it would seem. Why else would the woman lie to her family to prevent the two of them being together? It's the reason behind her sweaty palms and clammy skin, the reason Tommy is having to usher her down the street: she's not looking forward to what's waiting for her at the end of the walk.

Tommy raises their joint hands and presses a kiss to the back of her knuckles, sensing her discomfort. "It'll be fine, Dais. Everyone's lookin' forward to seein' ya."

All she does is raise one indignant eyebrow at him. _Not everyone_, it says.

He sighs and pulls her closer to him. "Polly won't be any trouble. I promise."

Which means he has already spoken to her, threatened her, intends to make sure she is welcoming. She's not sure it matters… She doesn't want to see the woman who tore them apart and kept them apart, the woman who, a younger Daisy would say, ruined her life. Older Daisy knows that everything happens for a reason, and Tommy is alive and well and they are back with each other. But a small part of her hates Polly.

She will be kind to the woman only for Tommy's sake. Daisy wants to be Tommy's family, which means Polly will be her family also. They have to get along, for Tommy's sake and for the Peaky Blinders' sake.

She's nervous that the new Daisy, the one who has been Fleur, will not be able to find a place in the murky city of Birmingham. She's somehow become accustomed to the clean air that is only available in the nice part of London and the uptempo life of the capital. Birmingham is busy, a hive of activity for sure, but if it is not industrialisation it is criminal activity.

She smirks internally at that. She is now walking hand in hand with the mastermind behind the North's criminal scene, is trying to build a life with him. With any luck, she'll be the Mistress of the Peaky Blinders.

God, she thinks, she needs to get to grips with Small Heath again. Get to grips with racing, with trading, with betting, with gambling. She needs to be just as good, if not better, than the rest of them. She needs to be a partner to Tommy, not the little girl he used to keep so separate from his other life.

He'd once told her that he was the worst part about her, but now everything had changed. They had to be masterminds together. They had to be a team.

So as they approach the dark green door that Arthur walks through so confidently - a lion walking into his den - she puts her shoulders back and tilts her head up. She's played with the wolves of London for years, conquered the richest men in England and had them at her whim… Polly Shelby is nothing in comparison.

Tommy sees her change from the little girl he used to know and love to the woman he's coming to know better and love more. He smiles proudly at her, stopping just shy of the threshold to drop a soft kiss on her mouth.

"We're in this together, Daisy Smith. Just you and me."

He always was a mind reader.

* * *

Fluufy af epilogue to follow shortly...


	24. Epilogue

My wedding was the best moment of my life. I raced down the aisle, pulling Alfie along with me whispering "Come on, come on!" the whole time as he was going too slow. He'd smiled indulgently, and picked up his pace.

I don't understand how some brides can walk slowly down that long bloody aisle. I couldn't wait to get to the front, to get to my dark-hair, blue-eyed man who was smiling at the end of the walkway, his eyes shining with happiness.

For the both of us, our marriage was the sign of the past coming to an end and a new future starting. For all of us.

Polly, who was sitting on the groom's side at the front with the rest of the family, and I had come to an understanding of sorts. I would never trust her but I would always consider her family because that's what she was to Tommy. I would never be disloyal to her, but I would never trust her like I trusted the rest of them. The ones who'd had Tommy's back when they thought I'd disappeared to become a whore. When Tommy had been miserable after London… they'd all made sure I came back sooner than planned to make their brother whole again.

It had worked.

Maybe not straight away, but over the last year we'd been in Birmingham together, we'd become closer than I'd ever thought possible. He helped me open an orphanage here, helped me build the rooms and help the children, and I'd helped him build his empire. It turned out that one month in Small Heath and one month in London wasn't enough either way. The Peaky Blinders' venture in London had become far bigger than any of them had thought.

Alfie is now a business partner with us, looking after our business down there when we're up here. Trading, betting and other activities that aren't exactly legal all went through Alfie first and then Tommy, and for the time being it was working. We'd even had international groups contact us for jobs.

It is horrible, sometimes, when he leaves and I can't go. If I'm needed in the orphanage or in the home in London, I can't join him on some jobs and it kills me every single time. I worry that he won't come back or somebody will hurt him or he won't be able to talk his way out of a situation.

He always comes back to me though.

My business is also booming - Josie, the sweet girl in London, had followed in my footsteps and had asked one of her old lovers, a rich old man, for some money to start her own home on the other side of the city - with my guidance. We are business partners, in some ways, but I mostly leave the running of my London properties to Josie now.

Now that I'm heavily pregnant, after only six months of marriage. Ada hd smiled when I'd told her that and said, "Well we all know neither of you are celibate, Dais," which had all led to Tommy and I finding our own place away from the family home.

Tommy cried when I told him. Arthur saw it and started to make fun of him until Tommy whirled and punched his brother, who had only laughed in response. He'd then whisked me away to our own home, only on the next street to the family one, to kiss me hard and fast against the living room wall.

"Daisy Shelby, Daisy Shelby… What've you done to me, hm? Fuck, a baby. _Our_ baby. Dais…I fucking love you so much…Daisy Shelby…"

And I'd laughed through my tears. If I'd thought he'd liked saying my name before, it'd gotten worse now I have his name instead. My husband isn't the most vocal of men, but he enjoys hearing his name attached to mine… it proves to him that we've made it. That after all the heartbreak we've endured, we're finally together. And so fucking happy.

When our child is born, I'll tell them our story, of how a small, orphaned, uneducated girl had built an empire of her own that was _helping_ people and, more importantly, had built herself a family who loved her. Of how she'd made a difference to children's lives, to other poor uneducated girls.

But more importantly, I'd tell them of how a ruined game of hide and seek became the heartbreakingly beautiful story of Tommy Shelby and Daisy Smith. Of how tragedy and grief morphed into a stronger love, a stronger companionship. Of how Tommy and I fought what seemed like the world to be together again, to look after each other again.

And how we'll continue fighting for our love and our family. Always.

* * *

_Fluff overload but Christ, they deserve it surely? _

_I can't thank you all enough for reading this story and leaving such amazing comments. As expected, Season 3 instantly gave me a kickstart, especially when I saw who he'd decided to marry (insert huge angry sigh here). I just kept thinking, no Tommy you belong with Daisy. Daisy. I guess that's how I knew I needed to get back to this story and finish it haha._

_Thanks so so much again! You might be seeing more of me in the PB ff world, as Cillian does nothing if not inspire me to write about the excellent character he's created. _

_Hope you enjoyed xo_


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